I’ll admit it; I’m a dreamer. I always get a little misty eyed when I hear John Lennon’s “Imagine” or Satchmo’s “What a Wonderful World”. So much of my life has been driven by a desire to make the world a better place. I remember, as a little kid, being overwhelmed with the state the world was in and feeling that I wanted to fix all of the big problems. Hunger, deforestation, racism, sexism, the list went on and on of issues that I felt called to help fix. As I child, I sized it all up, and got mad. Really mad. I saw all the problems in the world really had one common denominator, people. People. People were the problem. So I decided at the ripe age of nine to help the environment, leave those silly people to sort out their own problems, there are wolves and bears with shrinking habitat that need my help.

I was fascinated with the diversity and complexity of life on this planet and I never needed a career councillor to help me decide what courses to take in university. I dove headlong into biology and eventually into environmental risk assessment. But as I progressed in my career, the more I saw the same problem over and over again. I kept seeing the avoidable mistakes or the lack of care for the earth. Often dollars trumped compassion. I kept thinking, there had to be a better way to solve these problems.

In parallel to my scientific education, I began a spiritual quest to understand the basis of reality. I was fascinated by the world and I really couldn’t get enough of asking questions nobody could answer. I found out early on, at the age of four, that some spiritual institutions slam the door shut on any kind of questioning and expect blind faith. I almost chucked the whole concept of spirituality, but I kept having these nagging questions that couldn’t be answered by science. Science is very good at answering some questions of the world, but fails spectacularly at other, deeper questions. The most notable being “Why am I here?”.

I kept on questioning and exploring and eventually found my way to spiritualities and religions that encouraged questions. Buddhism, Taoism, Nature-based religions, Hinduism and eventually full circle back to Christianity was my spiral path to find the truth that lives in my heart. On that labyrinth of a journey I discovered two radical concepts: forgiveness and compassion. The more I explored the more I began to fall in love with humanity again. I began to have hope, and now I really believe that people are the solution to all the problems. I believe that the pure trusting, loving heart that exists in every tiny baby is still there in every adult. I believe that kindness and compassion are woven into our DNA and are our ultimate survival instincts. And I believe that we all have such tremendous power to change our lives and our world for the better.

I realized the solution to all of the environmental problems in the world, indeed nearly all problems, really boils down to love. Loving the self; because if you don’t love yourself how can you love anything else, like birds or trees or people. If you don’t care about yourself and take care of yourself, why would you ever care about the planet. I realized it is not thousands of problems in the world, it is one problem: we need more love.

This is why I am here. This is why I fly out of bed every morning when I have a client. My job is to teach people to love themselves, with no restrictions or caveats. To teach them that they are much more powerful together than apart, that they are wonderful, unique creations of the universe and they are in charge of their own lives. To help people remember their true essence is pure love and pure potential.

And so, what a wonderful journey it has been so far. I love the path I have taken to get to this moment with you. I believe in you. You will help me heal the world. I am no longer that scared child wanting to hide from the world and neither are you. I have help. You have help. Together we can create anything we can dream. Just imagine.