# Everyone sees what you seem to be... ==Everyone sees what you seem to be, few know what you really are; and those few do not dare take a stand against the general opinion. —Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince== How many people in your life actually know you? How many of those accept you for who you are. I can count on one hand, and I consider a lot of people friends. As I age *(hopefully like fine wine)*, it becomes increasingly more clear to me people consciously or subconsciously only want us to be the versions of ourselves which best serve them. Yuck... This powerfully reinforces my belief in sharing time with people whose version of me is more wonderful than my own version of myself. They average me up. Of course I try to do the same with others. It's positively outrageous how low self esteem is in the world today, and perhaps through kindness and belief in others I can help up level their own belief of themselves. A much more wondrous world it becomes when everyone values themselves (and others) appropriately. Or, stated by Thorin Oakenshield as he was passing into legend, "**if more people valued home, above gold, this world would be a merrier place**..." We're not destined to stay rooted in the circumstance of our present. To our collective upward trajectory.