Zoey...write this down 'cause I'll forget it.

More often than not I'll be talking to a young man or woman in trouble and stuff will fall out of my mouth that I hadn't any idea I had brewing up there in my cranium. Sometimes I'll catch myself say something and I'll think, "Wow, that sounds pretty good." Conversations amid crisis can get pretty back-and-forth pretty quickly and although you know where you're going with things occasionally by the time it goes from frontal lobe to lips it comes out sounding very different than what your idea was. Of course, sometimes it sounds awful. It's not always a good thing that there's a disconnect between your ideas and your speech.

Today, however, I tripped over a beauty that fell out of my face before I could even get a hand out to catch it. I had to pick it up off the floor, wipe it off and write it down.

I said, "eventually, you need to start being you, and then you need to get really good at it.

Yikes...I know. It even surprised me.

After the young man left my office I thought about what I had said and I realized from what place in the furrowed fields of my brain that such a previously planted thing was harvested. I spent a lot of years being other people for other people. Maybe sometimes I didn't have many other choices, but regardless, I didn't get to the meat of this living thing until I sussed out who I was.

As we grow up we learn by imitating, trying on aspects of other people. We see how the people around us fit, and of course, most of us dream of becoming famous perhaps, conveniently forgetting that what made the famous people that we idolize famous themselves was who they were – which isn’t us.

I remember reading that Kurt Cobain once said that “wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are.” That was before, you know...he went and killed himself, but that's nowhere near the point. It's good advice all the same.

The important thing to realize is that, eventually, you need start being you, and then...you need to get really good at it.

Write that down Zoey, and don't ever let anyone ever tell you to shut up. Sometimes it's all that talking that lets all the good stuff out. Just be sure to listen, and be sure to be curious and to learn. If you do all of that then you've earned the right to say a good deal of whatever you want...respectfully. You should probably ignore the rest of Kurt Cobain's advice too.