A few more

Realizations. I should make them my full time occupation.

One. Work keeps me grounded. Dancing and spending time with friends and watching movies and music gives me wings. Both make me feel alive.

Two. I spent the last one hour talking to Sw. Giving hope. I told her that it's possible. I told her not to be afraid. I told her to believe in herself. I told her that she's smart. That unless she envisioned herself getting there, she wouldn't. I tried to convey that the road ahead is never as rough as we make it out to be. That only when we start walking on it do we realize that we can cope, and cope well. And that confidence is a strictly monotonically increasing function of the number of steps we take. (I was trying to cheer her up in a geeky way too. :))
I told her to forgive herself. I told her about about our Pandora's boxes. Each of us has one: and it's filled with regrets, accusations, doubt and despair. But when we have to perform, we have to keep them locked up in the box and deal with them later. The only thing I didn't tell her was that when we go back to open the box, the regrets seem to have shrunk. Because the only way to deal with regrets is to nullify them.
I told her that there always is hope. Was I lying? Cheating? Is it possible to give others hope while denying it to ourselves? I wish I could talk to myself like this. Why do words of wisdom seem so impotent when we direct them at ourselves?