I remember getting The DaVinci Code as a gift on my twentieth birthday. I read it in three days. I not only loved the mystery but was attached to the theme of symbology. My mind doesn’t always think in logistics. Sometimes I can’t find words for what I feel because all that comes to my mind is images, many of which may not make sense to me in the moment, so I can’t even bring myself to accurately describe them.

When I tried to explain this to a friend, he looked at me like I was insane. “How do you live in a mind ruled by symbology?” My response came out without passing by that part of the brain that censors things. “How are you so arrogant to think that you don’t?”

Ask a child to draw their current feeling and you might be astonished (and sometimes maybe a little afraid) by the random things that show up on that paper.

The truth is, we are all largely ruled by symbology, perhaps just in different ways. Some of us wear certain charms or religious emblems because they represent an entire complicated belief system. Some of us admire particular characters in books of TV shows because we see aspects of ourselves in them. Some of us utilize certain days to express emotions or process grief such as honoring a person who has passed on what would have been their birthday or the anniversary of their passing.

Each year on the corresponding days that I lost my parents and on their birthdays, I will find a homeless person and take them out to lunch or dinner. It makes me feel connected to the energy that my parents instilled in me. It helps me to see myself and them in that individual.

Friday, March 20th, would have been the birthday of Chester Bennington, the lead singer of Linkin Park. For anyone that knows me, you know that I was devastated when he tragically took his life in 2017, even though I never knew him personally. Why? Because he symbolized a strength that I often struggled to find in the dark times of my life. He symbolized hope and determination and a light at the end of the darkness.

I was honored on that day to have been invited to speak on two podcasts about mental health, both of which I will be sharing with you when they go live. #makechesterproud

While my dreams and emotions might often leave me slack-jawed like Tom Hank’s portrayal of Robert Langdon in DaVinci, I still like discovering and being offered new ways to honor myself and those that mean a lot to me, whether they are physically with me or not.