This will not last forever.
Whatever you are experiencing now will pass in time.
For better or worse, everything will change.
Nothing is permanent.
This is not your fate.
Do not cling too tightly to this moment.
It will slip right out of your grasp if you try.
Nor should you take this moment too lightly.
It is the only one like this that you will ever experience.
Life is beautiful, tragic, and fleeting.
Be present for it as it passes because pass it will.
If you have relationships you care about, you will have to make compromises in order to maintain them.
Relationships are not one sided.
Every relationship has a necessary amount of give and take.
You may sometimes find that which you feel most strongly about is exactly that which you must give up for the sake of your relationship.
Relationships will challenge you in this way.
They provide friction in order to force your growth.
They require you to face parts of yourself that you would rather not and make you reconsider your values when you otherwise would not.
Not all compromises are necessary, but the most meaningful relationships will make you compromise more than you expected and in ways you did not expect.
There is a fine line between standing up for your values and pushing people away in defense of your ego.
It is an easy line to cross.
Boundaries are necessary for healthy relationships and, perhaps more importantly, for your mental and emotional wellbeing.
Sometimes your boundaries can become walls, however.
These walls keep out even those you care about and those who care about you.
When your pride gets involved, what may have started as the well-intentioned desire to stand up for yourself can turn into unnecessary conflict.
In this way, your pride has the ability to distort integrity into isolation.
Obviously, this is not healthy for you or your relationships.
Be careful, therefore, when you are standing up for yourself that you do so with humility, compassion, and understanding for others.
With these values guiding you, you are much more likely to maintain your integrity and your relationships along the way.
The problem with self-righteous anger is that it feels good.
When you are in its grips, you feel alive and full of purpose.
It is intoxicating.
And much like being intoxicated, self-righteous anger gives you tunnel vision, blinding you to the consequences of your words and actions.
It removes your compassion and inhibitions, and causes you to say and do things you would otherwise not do or say.
Often, you do not even know you are caught up in it until it is too late, or until someone calls you out.
This is one of the reasons friends are so important.
A good friend will tell you when you are wrong.
They will tell you when you are blinded by emotion and ego, and bring you back to reality.
A good friend wants you to be your best self, not for their sake, but for your own.
For this reason, a friend will tell you that you are out of line and that what you perceive as righteousness is actually just you taking yourself too seriously.
This can be hard to hear because self-righteous anger also deafens you to the truth.
The best of intentions can be ruined with a terrible attitude.
You are not entitled to a positive outcome for your efforts.
Everything must be worked for and earned.
Simply because you mean to do well and want to do good in the world does not mean this result is guaranteed.
Plenty of things can go wrong along the way.
Life always gets a say.
Aside from all of the obstacles and challenges life throws your way, you can also mess things up if you are not careful.
Even with the purest of intentions, it is difficult to create and sustain something beautiful in this world of conflict and strife.
And a bad attitude can turn even the most beautiful venture ugly in an instant.
Meditations on God 