Many of us think we’re honest. I know I do! But often you’ll find yourself uttering little lies, consciously or not. What does honesty mean to you? How can you live a more honest life? What do you do when you’re met with a dose of honesty?

Honesty is the best policy.
Benjamin Franklin

Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.
Thomas Jefferson

It has always seemed strange to me… the things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.
John Steinbeck

Confidence… thrives on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection and on unselfish performance. Without them it cannot live.
Franklin D. Roosevelt

Honesty is the best policy - when there is money in it.
Mark Twain

Treat those who are good with goodness, and also treat those who are not good with goodness. Thus goodness is attained. Be honest to those who are honest, and be also honest to those who are not honest. Thus honesty is attained.
Lao Tzu

Drawing is the honesty of the art. There is no possibility of cheating. It is either good or bad.
Salvador Dali

The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.
Groucho Marx

A sarcastic person has a superiority complex that can be cured only by the honesty of humility.
Lawrence G. Lovasik

The foundation stones for a balanced success are honesty, character, integrity, faith, love and loyalty.
Zig Ziglar

It is discouraging how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit.
Noel Coward

I believe in using words, not fists. I believe in my outrage knowing people are living in boxes on the street. I believe in honesty. I believe in a good time. I believe in good food. I believe in sex.
Bertrand Russell

Almost any difficulty will move in the face of honesty. When I am honest I never feel stupid. And when I am honest I am automatically humble.
Hugh Prather

This touching story is well-worth the read. It highlights the strength of a family’s resourcefulness as well as displays amazing strides in medicine that allow this beautiful child to hear for the first time.

Evie was born profoundly deaf but it was not until she was 16 months old that tests revealed she had no hearing nerves, meaning an auditory brainstem implant - or bionic ear - was her only chance of ever hearing.

The 23-month-old has Oculo-Auriculo-Vertebral Syndrome (OAV), a very rare condition with no known cause, which affects the eyes, ears and spine.

Her parents Emily and David Small, of Horndean, Hampshire, only had weeks to raise funds for Evie, then aged 19 months, to undergo the implant, or face the prospect of a life of silence.

The procedure has to be carried out before children reach their second birthday because pathways in the brain start to close up at this age.

Mr and Mrs Small were initially advised their daughter should undergo a cochlear implant on the NHS in Southampton but after asking for a second opinion they were told Evie had no hearing nerves.

“This meant a cochlear implant would not be an option as there is nothing for the sound to travel through,” Mr Small said.

“It would be like having a set of speakers and a stereo but no lead to connect them.”

If Evie’s parents, who have four other children, wanted their daughter to hear sound, an implant was their only option.

The couple had hoped Evie could be operated on in the UK, where only a handful of bionic ears have been fitted, but a team of specialists could not be assembled until after they successfully secured NHS funding from Portsmouth, which could have taken months.

Following online research the couple, both solicitors, found Professor Vittorio Colletti, a specialist doctor in Verona, Italy, who has ­successfully fitted more than 90 children with auditory brainstem implants.

Read more at BBC.

Handicaps could never stand in the way of true love, whether physical or emotional (though the emotional ones can definitely be a real pain but that’s a whole other story). This couple embraces each other and their physical impediments in this touching story:

The bride wore white and used a wheelchair; the groom looked handsome as he steered a Segway in his tuxedo.

Over the weekend, Melissa Crisp and Owen Cooper had a wedding on wheels.

Their wedding invitations asked guests to join them as they “roll into marriage.” “We had a roll theme going on,” Cooper told TODAY.com. “That was Melissa’s wording.”

As the couple shared their first dance, their family and friends were on their feet, cheering their spins. The couple had rehearsed their wheeled choreography thanks to 10 weeks of lessons at Axis Dance Company, an Oakland, Calif.-based touring dance company integrating dancers with and without disabilities.

“For the last part, I ditched the Segway and got on the end of Melissa’s armrest and she drove me around,” Cooper, 38, said. “That was fun.”

Stout Photography

Read more at TodayMSNBC.com

This story is guaranteed to warm your heart, even on a Monday morning. The Sparkle Effect is an innovative, student-run program that helps students across the country create cheerleading and dance teams that include students with disabilities.

And what a great name! Sparkling is what occurs when one is happy and full of spirit. So these gals sparkle all over the place!

As this news report mentions, the priority is “connection over perfection.”

Wow. GOOD STUFF! Pass on the love and “like” them on Facebook.

As I prepare to make a long trip, so many feelings pass through me. And surprisingly, not all good. Some feelings are painful, nostalgic…even a little anger (for the things that aren’t working here.) So today we explore the complexity of leaving, in all of its amazing and unusual aspects:

It is so hard to leave—until you leave. And then it is the easiest goddamned thing in the world.”
-John Green, Paper Towns

“You get a strange feeling when you’re about to leave a place, I told him, like you’ll not only miss the people you love but you’ll miss the person you are now at this time and this place, because you’ll never be this way ever again.”
- Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran

“Everybody has to leave, everybody has to leave their home and come back so they can love it again for all new reasons.”
- Donald Miller

“I give you this to take with you:
Nothing remains as it was. If you know this, you can
begin again, with pure joy in the uprooting.”
- Judith Minty, Letters to My Daughters

“And the danger is that in this move toward new horizons and far directions, that I may lose what I have now, and not find anything except loneliness”
- Sylvia Plath

There are times when the actual experience of leaving something makes you wish desperately that you could stay, and then there are times when the leaving reminds you a hundred times over why exactly you had to leave in the first place.”
- Shauna Niequist

“In life, a person will come and go from many homes. We may leave a house, a town, a room, but that does not mean those places leave us. Once entered, we never entirely depart the homes we make for ourselves in the world. They follow us, like shadows, until we come upon them again, waiting for us in the mist.”
- Ari Berk

“A spiritual pilgrim needs to discern when his or her life is stunted in an old field and find the courage and determination to go to a “new land” that the Lord will show. (Abraham-Journey) …so that you can find the wholeness you seek.”
- Sue Monk Kidd

Reading this story, I couldn’t help but wonder what these children and young adults must have experienced, being personally honored by His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet. They must have felt such pride in their work; a kind of pride that has a ripple effect for years to come.

Honoring our youth for accomplishments such as these have long-lasting effects. How can you honor a youth in your life?

The Dalai Lama marked his most recent visit to the UK by creating an award to honour young people who have helped to transform themselves, their community or the world in a positive way.

At ceremonies in London, Manchester and Edinburgh during a ten-day visit to the UK in June, the Tibetan spiritual leader presented the Youth Compassion Award to three 10–24-year-olds, who were nominated by their local communities as Britain’s most compassionate young people.

The Manchester Youth Compassion award was presented to 15-year-old Sophia Saleem in front of 10,000 people at a dedicated youth event at Manchester Arena called Stand Up and Be the Change. Sophia was given the award for her work leading several anti-bullying campaigns at her school, Levenshulme High. She also spoke at school assemblies and raised hundreds of pounds for Pump Aid, a charity providing clean water in Africa.

After receiving the award, Sophia said: “I was absolutely overwhelmed to be nominated. I was really struck by what the Dalai Lama had to say about personal responsibility and confronting challenges. Meeting him and receiving the award was such a huge honour.”

Read more.

How can crying be a positive thing? It’s an act based in sadness, grief and anger.

Well, it also provides relief from those things and sometimes, it’s just what you need to feel more positively!

“…you know that a good, long session of weeping can often make you feel better, even if your circumstances have not changed one bit.”
- Lemony Snicket, The Bad Beginning

“Crying is all right in its own way while it lasts. But you have to stop sooner or later, and then you still have to decide what to do.”
- C.S. Lewis

“Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts. I was better after I had cried, than before–more sorry, more aware of my own ingratitude, more gentle.”
- Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

“To weep is to make less the depth of grief.”
- William Shakespeare

“There you go…let it all slide out. Unhappiness can’t stick in a person’s soul when it’s slick with tears.”
- Shannon Hale, Princess Academy

“Weeping is not the same thing as crying, It takes your whole body to weep, and when it`s over, you feel like you don`t have any bones left to hold you up.”
- Sarah Ockler, Twenty Boy Summer

“Crying is one of the highest devotional songs. One who knows crying, knows spiritual practice. If you can cry with a pure heart, nothing else compares to such a prayer. Crying includes all the principles of Yoga.”
- Kripalvanandji

“More and more, the hardest part of crying is when I can’t stop.”
- Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

Timothy Ray Brown is believed to be the only person ever to be cured of the AIDS causing virus, HIV.

While many professionals are watching this very particular case with guarded optimism, we can all hope that Timothy Ray Brown is a sign of change to come.

Watch this video and let’s send our prayers and wishes out this morning that this case opens the floodgates of new medical possibilities for this deadly disease.

Only Cured HIV Patient

I love tea. I love coffee too. But tea…tea is different. It’s grounding, sophisticated. It enables intimate conversation. It fosters comfort. It makes you feel whole, lifted. Here are some great tea quotes:

“In Ireland, you go to someone’s house, and she asks you if you want a cup of tea. You say no, thank you, you’re really just fine. She asks if you’re sure. You say of course you’re sure, really, you don’t need a thing. Except they pronounce it ting. You don’t need a ting. Well, she says then, I was going to get myself some anyway, so it would be no trouble. Ah, you say, well, if you were going to get yourself some, I wouldn’t mind a spot of tea, at that, so long as it’s no trouble and I can give you a hand in the kitchen. Then you go through the whole thing all over again until you both end up in the kitchen drinking tea and chatting.

In America, someone asks you if you want a cup of tea, you say no, and then you don’t get any damned tea.

I liked the Irish way better.”
- C.E. Murphy, Urban Shaman

“A cup of tea would restore my normality.”
- Douglas Adams

“Dad was at his desk when I opened the door, doing what all British people do when they’re freaked out: drinking tea.”
- Rachel Hawkins, Demonglass

“Writing is a job, a talent, but it’s also the place to go in your head. It is the imaginary friend you drink your tea with in the afternoon.”
- Ann Patchett, Truth and Beauty

Thank God for tea! What would the world do without tea! How did it exist? I am glad I was not born before tea.”
- Sydney Smith

“There is something in the nature of tea that leads us into a world of quiet contemplation of life.”
- Lin Yutang

“I am so fond of tea that I could write a whole dissertation on its virtues. It comforts and enlivens without the risks attendant on spirituous liquors. Gentle herb! Let the florid grape yield to thee. Thy soft influence is a more safe inspirer of social joy.”
- James Boswell

“After a cup of tea (two spoonsful for each cup, and don’t let it stand more than three minutes,) it says to the brain, “Now, rise, and show your strength. Be eloquent, and deep, and tender; see, with a clear eye, into Nature and into life; spread your white wings of quivering thought, and soar, a god-like spirit, over the whirling world beneath you, up through long lanes of flaming stars to the gates of eternity!”
- Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat

I struggle with being calm. There. I said it. I try, I really do…but it always seems like a state of mind I plan on acquiring when I get home. My affliction is probably like many others who can’t always find that peace of mind. So here are a few quotes to lead us in the right direction:

A desire arises in the mind. It is satisfied immediately another comes. In the interval which separates two desires a perfect calm reigns in the mind. It is at this moment freed from all thought, love or hate. Complete peace equally reigns between two mental waves.
Sivananda

Affliction is the wholesome soil of virtue, where patience, honor, sweet humility, and calm fortitude, take root and strongly flourish.
David Mallet

Am I calm all the time? That is a question to ask my mother. I am very happy in my home. I have a good family, that gives me something extra.
Jean Alesi

Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.
Publilius Syrus

Be calm in arguing; for fierceness makes error a fault, and truth discourtesy.
George Herbert

Be like a duck. Calm on the surface, but always paddling like the dickens underneath.
Michael Caine

Beautiful music is the art of the prophets that can calm the agitations of the soul; it is one of the most magnificent and delightful presents God has given us.
Martin Luther

Before, I was so stupid. But, you know, when you have friends who died on the street, you say, okay, let’s calm down. It’s not the kind of energy I want to have in life. I want to go slower, and longer.
Olivier Martinez

But when I lose my temper, I find it difficult to forgive myself. I feel I’ve failed. I can be calm in a crisis, in the face of death or things that hurt badly. I don’t get hysterical, which may be masochistic of me.
Emma Thompson

Calm self-confidence is as far from conceit as the desire to earn a decent living is remote from greed.
Channing Pollock