"The proper time to influence a child's character is 100 years before he is born." -- William R. Inge

So what influence are you giving to the child born in three generations, that 21st Century baby-x? Will your life work echo through the generations, or are you another Ozimandius, commemorated but forgotten?

The first answers are easy. "I'm a teacher, I'm planting seeds of knowledge and self-reliance that baby-x will need." "I'm an artist, I'm creating images of hope that baby-x will cherish." Eventually, those easy answers -- the "resume" answers -- run out. The hard answers are the ones that come from your most honest self-analysis. From questions you can't answer quickly. So take some time. Reflect on the life you lived today.

Today, did you give your heart, freely, fully, compassionately? Or did you "hide out" and get through the day? Did you stand boldly and speak with your most honest voice, or did you let fear quench your fire? And if you spoke, whose words were they? Our selves are bathed in disconsonant voices. Strident outer voices: "be young, sexy, beautiful, funny." Diminishing inner voices: "be yourself, give yourself honestly." So who guides your daily actions?

Above all, how do you know? How do you know if those were the right choices? If baby-x will thank you? And perhaps most of all, that question demands your emotional intelligence. The honest answer requires you to fully integrate your thoughts, feelings, and actions and answer with your whole self.

Ordinarily, we view our emotions, thoughts, and actions as rather separate. We separate ourselves even farther by compartmentalizing "work," "family," "business," "love" into tiny thick-walled cubicles. We isolate ourselves from those around us, then we isolate our selves from ourselves. Why is that? Maybe it is fear. Maybe just convenience.

It is easier to manage the complexities of daily life by moving from cubicle to cubicle. There are so many demands we face, so many conflicting priorities. "Sure, I'd like to save the rain forest, but this product fits the budget." "Yeah, I want my students to think, but standardized testing is coming." "Of course I want less violence, but that despair is overwhelming." And those few moments when all the conflicting messages come together, we go on overload. We fall back against the wall, slump down and cry. There are too many demands.

There are. There is too much for us to face. Too much danger to give up fear. Too much anger to give up our barriers. Too many demands, too many threats. So what about the 21st Century baby-x? Are we just going to leave her to the chaos? Are we going to let three generations fade into a blur of self-preservation? Again, that choice is more convenient ? particularly with our selves all cut off and cut up.

Deep inside of every living creature there is a truthful core. Perhaps it is a fire, or perhaps a pot of warm bubbling soup ? or maybe it is like a bell that rings with a deep, peaceful rightness. And when you decide to make a difference for baby-x, the bell rings, and the echoes buoy you -- and it is enough, that inner validation is enough to keep going. Sadly, when our self is so divided into cubicles, doors tightly shut, the core is cut off from daily life.

At work, we make work decisions, but our work-self has not heard the bell ring for so long, it's forgotten the sound. It just follows habits, patterns, that seem to get it through the day. And using some tiny part of the whole the work-self navigates a path of least resistance through conflicting demands.

Locked in our tiny cublicles, we look at our friends and appreciate (or envy) those that hear their inner-bells in some tiny part of their lives. "She sure is at peace when she is painting." "He is never so alive as when he is with those children." But imagine if most of your life was that true, that peaceful, that alive. Imagine how powerful you would be if all of those parts of yourself were reunited ? if all of you could hear the echoes of your bell. If your thoughts, feelings, and actions were all going in the same direction at the same time.

Then, imagine if you were in a room full of people like that. People who had opened all the doors and put their cubicles back together, who could hear their inner truths, who knew deep in themselves when they were acting in baby-x's best interests. And together, they would make a difference -- maybe just a few seconds at a time. Together, they might paint the sky with a message: Listen, love, act -- and don't give up.

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