Me

it was not even an option. However, that little one’s tenderness, and his strength and determination to live, awoke something very profound within me.
    The second catalyst came when a friend of mine became pregnant. It was wonderful because this friend also happened to be my physical therapist, so I was around her during her entire pregnancy. She accompanied me on the Black and White Tour in 2007, so each day I could see how her belly was growing, and the fact that I was so close to her during those nine months helped me to experience the miracle of life. She eventually got to a point where she could no longer travel and had to stay home, but when her precious little daughter was born, I felt something click inside. Like so many other times, my moment had arrived. And that is how my search began.
    Meeting that tiny baby in the chaos of the tsunami and then seeing my friend’s utter happiness when she gave birth made a huge impression on me. Both events triggered a deep peace and sense of joy so pure that I somehow wanted to bring that feeling into my own life. I felt that my moment to be a father had come. At last, the only thing that mattered was that I was ready to be a father, and as far as that feeling went, no one was going to tell me otherwise: not my family, my friends, nor my lovers. This is something I felt I needed, something I desperately wanted to do, and so I set out to find the best possible way to do it.
    In hindsight, I realize my path had been leading up to this moment and had given me all of the tools I would need to make this decision. I had not only learned to accept and love myself; I had at last found the role of my life—working for the cause against human trafficking—and now I felt ready to unconditionally love someone else. Though I suppose no one is ever really ready to become a parent—in large part because it isn’t until one is a parent that one can truly understand what it means—in that moment I felt I had developed the spiritual tools necessary to take this very critical step.
    The time I spent in India helped me a lot. There I learned to listen to my silence, and therefore get to know myself, but I also learned a lot about life. I needed some distance from my career to learn the simple things about life and to be able to share my time here with others. Because I had spent so much time running around trying to be number one, I did not have time to grow up and mature at my own pace. I had to learn how to cry, to walk through the streets and see other people; I had to take control of my own life.
    In India I learned how to focus on gratitude. I think that most of us—myself included—go through life focusing on the negative. We often think we’re doing this to be realistic, or simply because we are identifying the negative things we are trying to eliminate in our lives. And although I don’t think we are wrong when we pay attention to that which hurts and bothers us—if we are really doing it for the sake of making things better—I believe it’s also important to dedicate time to focus on the good things, so we can repeat them and increase them in our lives.
    Today, when I feel bad, or when the day seems to weigh me down, or when I feel there is a cloud chasing me around everywhere I go, I make a list of ten things I am grateful for. Just ten. At first, when I would try to do this, I couldn’t get past three. I would think: “I’m alive. I’m healthy. There is food on my table . . . ,” and that’s as far as I would get. It would take me a long time to be able to expand that list.
    But when I really stop to think, I realize there are so many more extraordinary things to be grateful for. I can walk. I can see. I can feel. I have friends. I have a family that loves me. I have a home. I have two beautiful sons. And by the time I get to number eight on the list, I am already smiling. And that’s how I focus on the positive, which means adding instead of taking away.
    I always knew I was destined to be a father. It wasn’t like at age twenty-five I said, “When I am thirty-six I’ll do it.” I simply felt that my moment had arrived, and faced it when I knew I was ready. I know there are many people who are afraid to be parents, and I can honestly say it never worried me at all. I had the extraordinary example of my father. When he married his second wife, she said to me, “I fell in love with him because of how he treated you. I saw the dynamic between the two of