In the 1994 movie Forrest Gump, the lead character, played by Tom Hank, said, “Momma always said life was like a box of chocolates.  You never know what you’re gonna get.” Life is a rollercoaster of ups and downs, twists and turns, peaks and valleys. You are either leaving, entering, or going through a storm. Life is a daily exercise in trying to figure it out. It is easy to stay calm during great moments in life; the real test is where one stands during the turbulent vicissitudes of life.

We teach people how to treat us, knowingly or unknowingly. We allow people to treat us unfairly because they are our childhood friends, family members or the only friends we have. It is tough setting boundaries for our closest family members and long-time friends because it is not easy but at some point, one has got to draw the line. By setting healthy boundaries, we can have a mutually beneficial relationship, but we fear and don’t want to rock the boat; hence, we enable the drama queens and the chaos kings in our lives. Life is too short to be spending it with energy vampires, even if they are family members; you’ve got to protect your sanity.

Love is a verb, an action word, a behaviour, not a role. Blood is thicker than water, but love is thicker than blood. The older I get, the more I believe less of what anyone says; I only believe your actions. You can say you are my friend, but we can’t confirm that until the chips are down and everyone needs to step up. As Maya Angelou famously said, “When people show you who they are, believe them the first time”. Most of us don’t heed the advice of Maya; hence, we give people the benefit of the doubt all the time. In the end, they get the benefit, and we are stuck with the doubt

Equanimity is a state of psychological stability and composure which is undisturbed by the experience of or exposure to emotions, pain, or other phenomena that may cause others to lose the balance of their mind. ¹ Equanimity can be defined as an even-minded mental state or dispositional tendency toward all experiences or objects, regardless of their origin or their affective valence (pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral). It is a mental state or trait that is not easily achieved and typically requires some form of practice. It is an “even-mindedness in the face of every sort of experience, regardless of whether pleasure [or] pain are present or not”. ²

Equanimity is derived from French équanimité, from Latin aequanimitatem (nominative aequanimitas) “evenness of mind, calmness; good-will, kindness,”. ³  Equanimity is being at peace with whatever is in our experience. As French Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin once quipped. “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.

In network security, a firewall ¹ is a device that monitors incoming and outgoing network traffic and decides whether to allow or block specific traffic based on a defined set of security rules. The firewall is a first line of defence that establishes a barrier between secured and controlled internal networks that can be trusted and untrusted from outside networks, such as the Internet. Just as a network requires a firewall to determine the inbound and outbound traffic it allows, we must also create mental firewalls for ourselves. We live in a high-paced world where we are constantly bombarded with a deluge of data, and it is somewhat impossible to keep up, let alone turn the data into information.