What we fear about telling the truth is that someone will get mad at us. And probably, we've got some evidence for that happening, from our past.

The phrase came to me, quite suddenly: sensuous delight. Of course, we are living in sensory worlds--cultivating sensuous delight is about how much we stop to appreciate them. Is sensuous delight what's missing from your life?

If the point of the holiday season is to celebrate, to feel connected, to be merry--and the things that the culture at large has told you to do don’t actually have you feeling happy--why, oh why, would you continue to do them? Remember: if it’s not leaving you feeling fully-alive, it’s not truly living. Read more on the radically alive holiday: "on your own terms" edition.

It would be fair to say that I was born to live on my own terms. But the truth about "living on your own terms" is that it doesn't come without "costs," in a world where there are the consequences of judgements from others.