You will never be pretty enough, skinny enough, smart enough, successful enough, or famous enough for the media

Media is Munchausen by proxy.

What is in mind is a sort of Chautauqua...that__ the only name I can think of for it...like the traveling tent-show Chautauquas that used to move across America, this America, the one that we are now in, an old-time series of popular talks intended to edify and entertain, improve the mind and bring culture and enlightenment to the ears and thoughts of the hearer. The Chautauquas were pushed aside by faster-paced radio, movies and TV, and it seems to me the change was not entirely an improvement. Perhaps because of these changes the stream of national consciousness moves faster now, and is broader, but it seems to run less deep. The old channels cannot contain it and in its search for new ones there seems to be growing havoc and destruction along its banks. In this Chautauqua I would like not to cut any new channels of consciousness but simply dig deeper into old ones that have become silted in with the debris of thoughts grown stale and platitudes too often repeated.

The question is not whether or not change and challenge are going to happen. They are. The question is, when they do happen, how are we going to choose to look at them, contextualize them, and navigate them?

What we decide to do in the face of adversity is perhaps the truest measure of character.

Life isn't a merry-go-round, it's a roller coaster. Life won't always be smooth, it may not always be pretty, but it will be an adventure _ one not to be missed.