Have you ever experienced a feeling of familiarity or affinity for a person or place that you have never met or been to? It is as if all you have to do is hear stories about a person's life or see pictures of a foreign place and you are instantly connected to them.

This is a feeling that is very familiar to me because it has been present in my life for as long as I can remember. As a little girl, I was always mesmerized by the thought of traveling the world and getting to immerse myself in different cultures and ways of life. This feeling has never left me.

Now that I am older, however, I have a better understanding of where these feelings come from. A big part of my personality is made up by one of what I believe to be my defining characteristics: empathy.

Empathy is the tendency or ability to feel the feelings and emotions of another person as if they are your own. As I was growing up, I noticed that I tended to be hypersensitive to the pain and suffering of other people. It would cause me pain to see other people hurting.

This has allowed me to open my heart to people that I hardly know and places that I have never been to. It has planted in me a yearning to know more about the world in general and every person and place within it. From a very young age, it sparked in me the love of traveling and gave life to a curiosity that is sometimes hard to satisfy.

This yearning can be taxing on a person, though. When you allow yourself to feel this much for so many people and places, it can get very overwhelming. You find that your heart is being pulled in a million different directions, and you begin to realize that you cannot possibly follow it everywhere. You must learn to love these people and places from afar until you are able to experience them, all the while knowing that you may never experience them all.

One of the biggest lessons that I have learned while growing up is that life is short. No one is promised a certain amount of time on this earth, and it is my personal opinion that most people waste the time that they are given. We go through life taking everything so seriously, and we forget to stop and enjoy this beautiful place that God has given us.

We forget that sometimes the most important things in life are the smallest things.

We forget that it is a beautiful experience to allow ourselves to fall in love with the people and places around us.

We allow fear to stop us from taking chances and experiencing everything we possibly can in this life.

My message to you is simple: Allow yourself to be wide open in this world. Do not close your heart to the people and places around you. Learn how to empathize with others and then practice it everyday.

Do this, and you will be amazed at how your life will change.