Emotionally healthy adults are capable of experiencing true joy despite the bad thins that might happen to them. After half a lifetime, most of us catch on to the idea that some days things work and some days they do not, regardless of how hard we try. We lose the grandiosity of youth that says we can and must be the force at the center of life. At some time in your life, you have probably experienced the pangs of homesickness. It might have been those first times you stayed overnight with a friend or went on a sleepover As much as you wanted to be with your friends, you might have been lonely for your parents and for the secure feeling of being home, where is was safe and comfortable. Sustained homesickness might not have come until later—when you left for college or moved to a new state to buy a house. And you might have found yourself struggling to adapt to new surroundings and maybe even new relatives. During these periods of adjustment and absence, you perhaps felt unsettled, lonely, and perhaps a deep yearning for home. If we do our emotional homework, our feelings can continue to be a source of great excitement, as they were in our teens, and young adulthood, but they can also cease to burden us the way they did when we were young. They may even bring us happiness. #RandolphHarris 1 of 9

It is the very nature of emotions to get tangled up. A feeling as basic as love can be tied to trust, respect, support, understanding and more. Sometimes our intense yearnings can cause poor performance, a waste of time, lack of concentration, and a dislike for our present disposition. The World changes that have taken place in the last century have increased the need for emotional support systems, yet we have not as a culture developed any new ways for keeping up with the pace and intensity of our emotions. Increasing numbers of psychologist and psychiatrists agree that the complexities of modern life, and our culture’s devaluation of feelings, may necessitate an emotional revolution. Only rare individuals ascend to adulthood in full harmony with their innermost feelings. Most of us reach the prime of our lives burdened by unresolved feelings from childhood and unaware of the bounty unadulterated feelings can provide. Our expectations are raised, but the World we live in—the World we made!—is unable to fulfill what our own popular culture promises us. Bloated on promise, starving for opportunity, a good chunk of us search for a way into the popular World. Our culture has become separate from us. In the struggle to renew our claim to our own fantasies, we seem to be moving further and further from ourselves. #RandolphHarris 2 of 9

People do not always get discovered because of their talent. There are lots of talented people in the World; some make it, some do not. You have to work hard, and you have to work smart. And most important is to have originality and genuine talent. In 1889, Louis and Regina Borgenicht boarded an ocean liner in Hamburg, Germany for America. They knew one person in American and had enough money to last a few weeks. Like so many other immigrants to America in those years, theirs was a leap of faith. Louis and Regina found a tiny apartment on Eldridge Street, on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, for $8 a month. Louis then took to the streets to look for work. The answer came to him after give long days of walking up and down the street of the Lower East Side, just as he was about to give up hope. It was clothes. Everywhere around him stores were opening—suits, dresses, overalls, shirts, skirts, blouses, trousers, all made and ready to be worn. Coming from a World where clothing was sewn at home by hand or made to order by tailors, this was a revelation. Louis and Regina looked for a novel, something that people would wear that was not being sold in stores. #RandolphHarris 3 of 9

For four more days Louis walked the streets. On the evening of the final day as he walked toward home, he saw a half dozen girls playing hopscotch. One of the girls was wearing a tiny embroidered apron over her dress, cut low in the front with a tie in the back, and it struck him, suddenly, that in his previous days of relentlessly inventorying the clothing shops of the Lower East Side, he had never seen one of those aprons for sale. Regina has an ancient sewing machine they have bought on their arrival in America. The next morning Louis went to a dry-goods store on Hester Street and bought a hundred yards of gingham and fifty yards of white crossbar. He came back to their apartment and laid the goods out on the dining room table. Regina began to cut the gingham—small sizes for toddlers, larger for small children—until she had forty aprons. The next morning, Louis gathered them up over his arm and ventured out onto Hester Street. By one o’clock they were all gone. Eventually Louis and Regina went on to be a prosperous manufacturer of women’s and children’s clothing. The rewards of emotional vitality are so many and so far-reaching. Take advantage of the rewards along this path; you need the confidence and outlook that come after spending a few years on the planet to make the most of the discoveries found here. #RandolphHarris 4 of 9

You can free yourself from the tyranny of depression, rage, and free-floating anxiety—those unwanted visitors that have drained your energy and zest for life. Autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward are three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying. It is not always about how much money we make that ultimately makes us happy between nine and fives. It is whether our work fulfills us. If you were offered a choice between being an architect for $75,000 a year and working in a tollbooth every day for the rest of your life for $100,0000 a year, which would you take? Most people would choose the job as an architect because there is complexity, autonomy, and a relationship between effort and reward in doing creative work, and that is worth more to most of us than money. Work that fulfills us is meaningful. Being a teacher is meaningful. Being a physician is meaningful. So is being an entrepreneur. Even when people are penniless and desperate, and they know their career is going to require years of backbreaking labor, they are ecstatic, because the prospect of those endless years of hard labor does not seem like a burden to them. Bill Gates had the same feeling when he first sat down at the keyboard at Lakeside. And the Beatles did not recoil in horror when they were told they have to play eight hours a night, seven days a week. They jumped at the chance. #RandolphHarris 5 of 9

Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning. Once it does, it becomes the kind of thing brings you joy. If you work hard enough and assert yourself, and use your mind and imagination, you can shape the World to your desires and imagine the example you are setting for your kids. In those homes were meaningful work is practiced, imagine what it is like for the children to watch the meteoric rise of their parents. People who are willing to do the work of getting in touch with what matters to the heart report huge gains in mental clarity, physical energy, interpersonal communication, and spiritual readiness. Best of all, they report they have a better sense than ever of who they are and how to present that self to the World. Learning to command new, more constructive emotional responses to disturbing situations does not happen overnight. You cannot hope to erase years of habit in one sitting. If you become comfortable with the hurt, angry, fearful innocence within yourself, you will be able to accept yourself as you really are, not just how others see you or how you want to see yourself. #RandolphHarris 6 of 9

Not just children, but all of us will want to think of home under joyous or trying circumstances. We let ourselves become homesick for love, acceptance, security, understanding, and guidance that generally are taught and shared there. Home should be the place in which a person can unburden one’s soul and find renewed strength to face the World, where there is comfort, joy, and understanding, where best friends can live, and where we can learn to be our best selves. There is a certain kind of yearning for home we should never want to lose. Home should be an anchor, a port in a storm, a refuge, a happy place in which to dwell, a place where we are loved and where we can love. Home should be where life’s greatest lessons are taught and learned. Home and family can be the center of one’s Earthly faith, where love and mutual responsibility are appropriately blended. Thinking of home with its pleasant and happy memories can make us stronger during our present and future days here upon the Earth. To go back to the land that nourished us and built character in us and provided us the sacred beginning of a life devoted to God, family, career, and country is truly love. Our responsibilities are to share the warmth of our homes by being god neighbors and friends. #RandolphHarris 7 of 9

To know who we are is important, but to know where we are in relationship to our Earthly home and Heavenly home is essential if we are to receive all the blessings our Father in Heaven has for those who love him and keep his commandments. Our eternal home is our ultimate destination. A proper yearning for home can prevents our getting lost in detours or paths that lead us away. We have all felt the heartache and longing for opportunities that, at least for a time, were beyond our reach. However, we are literally the children of our Heavenly father. Almighty Lord, God of the powers and the flesh, who lives in the highest and cares for the humble, who searches our hearts and affections, and clearly foreknows the secrets of people; eternal and everliving light, in whom is no change nr shadow of variation; immortal king, receive our prayers which at the present time we offer from our understanding, trusting the multitude of your mercies. Forgive all sins committed by us in thought, word or deed, consciously or unconsciously, and cleanse us from all defilement of flesh and spirit. Grant us to pass the night of the whole present life with wakeful heart and sober thought, ever expecting the radiant day of the appearing of the Savior, when the judge of all will come with glory to render to each according to their deeds. #RandolphHarris 8 of 9

 May we not be found fallen and idle, but awake and alert and ready for action, ready to accompany him into the joy and divine palace of his glory, where there is the ceaseless sound of those keeping festival and the unspeakable delight of those who behold the ineffable beauty of your face. For you are true light that enlightens and sanctifies all, and all creation sin to you throughout the ages. When we have a yearning and do not know what it is for, perhaps it is our soul longing for its heartland, longing to be no longer alienated from the Lord and the pursuit of something much higher, and more fulfilling than anything this Earth has to offer. May our yearning for home be the motivation we need to so live that we can return to our Heavenly home with God our Father on a forever basis. May our hearts be filled with gratitude for the Lord for his divine intervention to relieve the suffering, heal the sick, and resurrection. The soul shall be restored to the body, and the body to the soul and then shall the righteous shine forth in the kingdom of God. #RandolphHarris 9 of 9