I posted earlier this week about getting together with my secret cooking crew to have some fun experimenting in the kitchen. Which we did yesterday for a few hours and it was fantastic as always. Lollipop sticky lemon chicken on a bed of garlic parmesan risotto with an arugula kiwi side salad tossed with toasted pine nuts and balsamic with a splash of vanilla extract. By the way, if you’ve never added vanilla to balsamic before … mmmm, what a treat. And for dessert we had vanilla bean ice cream melting onto warm pan grilled pineapple slices and drizzled with homemade salted caramel. We cook together and then we eat together but the real treat, and the real point, is always the time spent together. No special occasion. Just playing. Side note: we decided yesterday to call our little group the Finer Things Club which is a name we’ve stolen from the TV show The Office, but it so works so, no apologies.

So I posted that it was going happen and someone commented and asked, “How is it that you are so busy and yet find the time to have so much fun?” My response was that we don’t find the time, we make the time. I share that with you to hopefully inspire you, but let me be really clear about something … it’s not all fun and games around here. Yes, Tina and I really are doing our very best to authentically build ourselves a beautiful life, but that’s not because everything is songbirds and roses. Life is good, but like everyone, we have our share of dark clouds, stresses, worries, and trying times. What’s that old saying? “Be kind, because everyone you meet is fighting an epic battle.” It’s true. The difference with us is we don’t wait around for life to get perfect before we make time for life to be fun. We make time for fun exactly because life is not perfect, and never will be.

I’ve never been so committed to embracing my inner kid and—in between crises—spending absolutely as much time playing as I can. The truth is my most genuine self is a child—consumed with wonder and fascinated with just about everyone and everything. I’m a kid and the world is my candy shop, and I’m committed to that version of me because there was a time— too long of a time—when I wasn’t honoring my truest most genuine self. There was a time I was far more insecure and spent way too much time seeking the approval of very grown up, very successful, respectable people. Luckily, I never got their approval.

Now I know if I become too “mature” to play, I’m headed in the wrong direction. I finally realized I could only see my way through this life by being the real me, no matter what. Everything meaningful in this life has to survive honesty and I eventually decided to be honestly me regardless of how it made me appear to others. Whether I’d look like a sinner or a saint, a hero or a heretic, I had to put on my own face and be ok with being just genuinely Dean. And when I did I found my compass. The great thinker Howard Thurman once said, “There is something in every one of us that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in ourselves. It is the only true guide we will ever have. And if we cannot hear it, we will all of our life spend our days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls.”

I listened for the sound of the genuine in me and discovered that deep inside, my truest most genuine self is a kid on a trampoline. And even though I began my life as a character in other people’s stories, I am resolved to finish my life in my own story.

And my story is a children’s book. It was Dr. Seuss who said, “Adults are obsolete children.” Which is why, for me, from here on out, the kid on the trampoline gets the final word. The point is the genuine you is the best compass you’ll ever have for navigating this often difficult life. Look for that genuine you. Who knows, maybe you’ll find a kid on a trampoline. And if you do … maybe … instead of telling that kid what to do … maybe today is the day you let...