1. Being broke is not the same as being broken, losing money is not the same as being lost, and finding your balance is not something you can do on a balance sheet.

2. Don’t confuse having less with being less, having more with being more, or what you have with who you are.

3. Slow down. What you’re chasing may be trying to catch you.

4. Prayer is a path where there is none.

5. Put your faith and not your fears in charge.

6. God only gave you two arms. If you’re busy hugging the past you can’t embrace the future. Don’t let the past kidnap your future.

7. This too shall pass. Change is the only constant. In order to take a breath you must release your breath.

8. Do what you can, but never forget that letting go is very different from giving up.

9. Break the rules that are breaking you. Tough times don’t require you to be tough on yourself. Find the courage to suffer happiness.

10. Remember, remember, remember. Things don’t have to be good for you to be great.

Noah benShea is one of North America’s most respected and beloved poet-philosophers. An international bestselling author of 20 books, including the famed Jacob the Baker series, his inspirational thoughts have appeared on more than 30 million Starbucks coffee cups. His weekly columns on life were published for five years by the New York Times Regional Syndicate and nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. In addition to his many accomplishments, he serves as Philosopher In Residence for Foundations Recovery Network and La Paloma Treatment Center.
(Copyright 2008, All Rights Reserved)

Doctors say there is enough salt in one pickle to give us all the sodium we need for a year. I’d like more years, and so I consume fewer pickles. But this is a story I still gnaw on over the years. It is a story my father’s mother told over and over. And over and over. When I was younger I thought this was just the malaise of her advancing age. But it wasn’t. She was simply hoping we were listening.

The story goes that two or three times every year in the midsummer, my grandmother, and other ladies in the neighborhood, would gather at one of their homes to pack pickles. They each brought a bushel of cucumbers, dill, salt, bay leaves, jars, and their troubles.

They always gathered at different people’s homes but always around a large table. Each of them would unload their bushel baskets setting the ingredients before them. And then they would unpack their problems.

In turn and with respect, each of the women would begin to talk about what was wrong in her life. Who was sick. Who was still single. Who was getting older. Who hadn’t slept with her husband. Who wished she hadn’t. What couldn’t be whispered on street corners found its way to the table. We are all gasping to breathe, and here there was air time. Safe air. The tone was less gossip than confessional. The listening done with an ear to hear, to help. And no matter what was said. No matter the shouts of telling silences. A promise went into every jar with the pickles. A promise not to tell.

The conversation would last most of the afternoon and was punctuated by sips of hot tea from old jelly jars. Heads nodded with understanding as burdens were unpacked and pickles packed. Eyes rolled with disbelief at stories that would never leave the room. “Please, God,” they would nudge each other, “don’t show me what I can bear.”

At the end of the day, the women would stand and arch their backs. They would wash the coarse salt from their hands. They would slowly load their listening and jars of pickles back into the bushels they brought. Each of them would offer the others a feel of how heavy her bushel was. And then they would go home staggering under their loads. Each with her own bushel. Each a queen carrying her burden with bearing. Each thinking of what she had heard.

At this point in the story my grandmother would lift her eyebrow and wag her finger so the lesson was not lost. Spirit to spirit, I want her to know I got the message: Caring impacts what we are carrying.

Every one of the women had arrived at the afternoon feeling weighted by her burdens. And then, each of them had heard the load that the others carried. Each of them had felt the weight of the other’s bushel. And each had gone home thankful to be lugging only their own troubles. Thankful for what was theirs. Even the anguish and the aches. The load had shifted. Their lives seemed lighter without weighing any less.

We offer others a chance to lighten their load when we say little and listen loudly. We learn a great deal about life and its burdens when we quietly help others to unpack theirs. Our own burdens weigh less when we listen to what is weighing on others.

Noah benShea is one of North America’s most respected and beloved poet-philosophers. An international bestselling author of 20 books, including the famed Jacob the Baker series, his inspirational thoughts have appeared on more than 30 million Starbucks coffee cups. His weekly columns on life were published for five years by the New York Times Regional Syndicate and nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. In addition to his many accomplishments, he serves as Philosopher In Residence for Foundations Recovery Network and La Paloma Treatment Center.

(Copyright 2008, All Rights Reserved)

Character isn’t how we live the life we intend but how we live the life destiny intends. We’re all hurting. What’s hurting you is where your work begins. You’re not expected to finish the work, but neither are you excused from it. It’s time to get busy.

Time is an orchard; every moment is ripe with opportunity. Some day is no day. You matter. You are gifted because life is a gift. Know that; act on it, open your gift, open yourself to who you might yet become. The time is not now or never, but now is never again.

In order to turn your life into a work of art, you have to hang in there. A trying time is not the time to quit trying. Strength is not the absence of weakness but how we wrestle with our weaknesses.

Noah benShea is one of North America’s most respected and beloved poet-philosophers. An international bestselling author of 20 books, including the famed Jacob the Baker series, his inspirational thoughts have appeared on more than 30 million Starbucks coffee cups. His weekly columns on life were published for five years by the New York Times Regional Syndicate and nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. In addition to his many accomplishments, he serves as Philosopher In Residence for Foundations Recovery Network and La Paloma Treatment Center.

(Copyright 2008, All Rights Reserved)

Our spirit is the catalyst of our spiritual beliefs, our passions and our creativity. And when that spark is threatened, all of these are threatened.

Our spirit is less often taken from us than given away. This usually happens when we don’t know or forget the value of what we have, which is the value of who we are.

Evil will try to rob others of their spirit, but in the end evil will fail because, by its actions, they will be robbed of their own spirit and their fire will go out. They will be left in the dark.

Honor the spark in you that is you. Guard your spirit’s flame against the winds of time, nature and dark intent. Pass the spark, and word of this spark. Remind your children to do the same and your flame will be fanned.

Be of good spirit by being good to your spirit. A spiritual life is less something we have to find and more something within us that we simply have to embrace. Do not abandon your spirit and you will not be abandoned.

Noah benShea is one of North America’s most respected and beloved poet-philosophers. An international bestselling author of 20 books, including the famed Jacob the Baker series, his inspirational thoughts have appeared on more than 30 million Starbucks coffee cups. His weekly columns on life were published for five years by the New York Times Regional Syndicate and nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. In addition to his many accomplishments, he serves as Philosopher In Residence for Foundations Recovery Network and La Paloma Treatment Center.

(Copyright 2008, All Rights Reserved)