“My wife’s death five months ago yesterday caused me to do some pretty serious soul-searching. It made me realize that I was just going-with-the-flow in too many areas of my life. I was aimlessly moving from one day to another without much purpose. When I found out how quickly things can change, I become more determined than ever to live the rest of my life with purpose. Much of what I do now will be aimed at a single goal.

I pledge the rest of my life to being an advocate for those who have had major adversity in life, particularly with deafness/hearing loss, autism, blindness and similar challenges. I pledge that I will do whatever I can to help them cope, and I will try to educate others to see them not as labels, but as people very much like themselves.

When I am talking about “them” above, I am also talking about myself. Due to my low self-esteem at a young age, I allowed others throughout my life to put labels on me. I was weird, I was deaf and “dumb”, I was a very strange autistic person. I have been wearing a mask for too long because I didn’t have the courage to fight these labels. I didn’t explain that label is NOT who I am.

I will no longer be content to just dream of this new approach to life, I must do what is necessary to implement it. Living up to this pledge will now be a top priority for me, but I will also try my best to find the true happiness that has eluded me thus far. I realize that happiness is primarily a state of mind, not a particular thing. I will do what is necessary to remove all those things that causes personal anguish and negative feelings from my life.

Simply stated, I want to die a happy person.

This is why RJsCorner is taking a significant turn in its content starting tomorrow. I hope you stick around to see the results of a more positive and assertive way forward.