As I was turning 50, I left my life and family behind and ran to the mountain, bought a cabin and spent a year up there with Thomas Merton and his journals trying to figure out how I wanted to spent the rest of my life, how I wanted to live a meaningful life. Like many men who seek change, people told me I was having a “mid-life crisis,” one of those noxious labels we put on people, usually men, who want to think about their lives and consider the rest of their lives. It was a profoundly significant move for me, I veered away from a life of “security,” of seeing maturity as a mandate to shrink my expectations and “downsize” (another noxious label) and begin the big slide towards assisted care and a meaningless existence.

I wanted a spiritual life, a spiritual dimension to my life. I had no idea how difficult and wonderful that decision was, how lonely and painful, how satisfying and rewarding. The trip to the mountain profoundly altered my life.

Now, 15 years later, I am beginning to tie it all together. I see where all this was going. I understand what was in my heart and soul, even if I could not articulate it or understand it, or if the people around me could not understand it.  Unlike then, and for the first time in my life, I am where I want to be, with the person I want to be with, doing what I love to do, living where I need to be living. For the first time in my life, I am living in a home I expect to die in, wish to die in, will die in. That is my intention, that is what will be. As I did 15 years ago, I am considering the rest of my life, taking responsibility for it.  Maria and I will decide it’s outcome, not insurance companies or doctors or bureaucrats in Washington.

If I am where I want to be in many ways, I also see that the work I need to do on myself is not done, will never be done. The meaningful life for me is not a perfect life, not a life without struggle and pain. Every day I discover something in me that needs to grow, change and evolve. Every day I commit to doing the work. Every day I learn that the work is not done, will never be done. I remember sitting on the mountaintop and reading Merton’s wonderful journals and seeing that I needed to find love. I needed to love what I did. I needed to make my life count, to make it worthwhile to me, and to consider what I needed to do to make that happen. I heeded Merton’s very personal call to love and faith. We have have our own idea of God, our own idea of faith. Mine is still evolving. I am close sometimes.

So much about my life – everything about my life – has changed. So much  needs to be done. You are never really there. I wrote at the end of “Running To The Mountain,” my chronicle of that time, that crisis and mystery were just around the corner. So they were. So they are.