You realized you were you when you started to talk and interact with others. Only later did you realize that Daddy was not the King of All the Land and Mommy wasn't the best cook in the whole word, nor yet was Mommy the Queen or Daddy the cook.... well you get the idea that as a young child you had to accept the world the way you found it, and whether your parents or imaginary parents pampered you or left you out on a snowbank to die, that was the way the world was.

So where do we get this notion that our lives OUGHT to be some certain way? Can I change Mirapex or command away all the weight I gained on it? Can I by force of will make myself drive a car responsibly without being a menace to everything on the road? Where did anyone sign on a dotted line that after I finished being a folk music star I would go on to design bridges more beautiful than the ocean itself while my true love played with our four perfect children?

Even in marriage, all one can really promise is to be faithful. Everything else is up to the four winds. A friend of mine married a guy who, on their honeymoon, fell on a steep, rocky path and hit his head, killed by Nature herself in his twenties right before her very eyes, leaving her with a child she had conceived on their wedding night. I have been married to my (second) husband for almost thirty-one years, and we're still in love, and we travel a lot together and he got prostate cancer. They removed it all, but now what? Is my uncertainty greater than my friend's? Should she be living as if her first husband were still alive? Should I assume my caregiver will always be with me?

My dreams and plans were about things that never existed, so I never lost them. I only misidentified the future. I cannot create a future that's just like I want. For the sake of inner peace, I can only receive the life given to me each day with thankfulness. I wish I would remember that.

Jaye