After two years of grieving the loss of her second husband, the wisest woman in my life came and asked me, her son: "How do I get over this?"

As a recently-ordained teacher of Buddhist philosophy, the go-to answer is "let go". But that was too simplistic an answer, for sure. And so I fed the nearly-four decades of wisdom she'd been giving me right back to her.

She cried. And she said she thought I wasn't listening. As it turns out, all she needed was to hear the very things she'd been telling me and others.

At some point later (I don't remember exactly when) she said: "Dang, kid! What part of that came from your Buddhist stuff?"

"Mom, didn't you recognize the advice you were always giving other people?" I asked.

"Not a word of it," she smiled. "And if you ever tell anyone I sound that wise, I'll deny it."

My mother was always trying to help everyone. And as her son, I always found that she was annoyingly perceptive about the way I was. So, at the age of 11, when I asked her why everything was so hard for me, she said:

"The lessons we learn are only as hard as our heads."

At the age of 48, I still repeat this to people who are having a rough time of things. It's the wisest thing I've ever been able to apply.