I have a friend. Call her, “——-, my Belle (old Beatles tune) for the sake of anonymity. I sent this to her this morning. I learn, grow so from our friendship. She doesn’t know this is so. I’ve known ——- for 17yrs. Talk to her once every three. Maybe. The connection between us? Instant. inspiring. So attuned, on point with “The Space Between the Notes” She is, as this message is. I share it here with you. Taken verbatim from David Brooks beautiful book “The Road to Character.”

The Essence of Heart…

The heart cannot be taught in the classroom…intellectually, to students mechanically taking notes.Good wise hearts are obtained through lifetimes of diligent effort to dig deeply within and heal lifetimes of scars… You can’t teach it or email it or tweet it.It has to be discovered in the depths of one’s own heart when a person is finally ready to go looking for it and not before. The job of the wise person is to swallow the frustration and just go on setting an example of caring and digging and diligence in their own lives. What a wise person teaches is the smallest part of what they give. The totality of their life, the way they go about it in the smallest details is what gets transmitted.Never forget that. The message is the person,perfected over lifetimes that was set in motion by yet another wise person now hidden from the recipient by the dim mists of time. Life is much bigger than we think. Cause and effect intertwined in a vast moral structure that keeps pushing us to do better, become better even when we dwell in the most painful confused darkness.