Each of us is a one-and-only. No one sees the world just as we do. No one has our laugh or smile, our exact way of walking and talking. Besides our handwriting and our fingerprints, we are unique in a hundred other ways; our thinking style, our sense of humor, our tastes have never come together in one person before, and they never will again. We are truly ourselves and no one else, matched to our place and time in history and no other.

We are related to, but not defined by, those who came before us. Their choices need not be our choices, their mistakes and limits need not be ours. They are different people matched to a different time. We are not who they are and we are not responsible for who they are. We are new people and this is a new day. Our day. No one else can live this life for us. Let us go forward.

Today, I pray for the wisdom to see myself as the precious, unequaled human being that I am. Let me be aware that the life I've been given is mine.