When I was eight or none years old, I wrote a letter to the Providence Journal; it was about the heavy traffic outside of a local high school, I urged the city to put up a red light in order for the students to be safe.

To my astonishment, the paper published the letter. There was soon a traffic light in front of the school.

For the first time in my life, I saw my name in print. I felt the power of the word.

This, I thought, was my destiny. To write and be published.  My parents laughed at me, they thought I was cute, but my uncle Harry sat me down and was serious:

Every day is important to us because it is a day ordained by God, he said. Grab your destiny and follow it. Never let it go.

I suppose this message has become the driving ideology behind my life.

Each one of us has a vocation. Each one of us is called to a special place in our universe. If we find that place, wrote Thomas Merson, we will be happy if we do not see it, or worse, if we never seek it out, we can never be completely happy.

Joseph Campbell warned us to follow our bliss, or otherwise, live a “substitute life.” T.S. Eliot wrote we must follow our passion, or live lives as “hollow men.”

Annie Dillard wrote, “I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you.”

So here I am at agee 72, more than six decades away from that letter in the Providence Journal, writing my 27th book proposal, getting up at dawn every day of my life to write on my blog, take my photos, follow my destiny.

I thank Uncle Harry, an unusual man in his time, for understanding the import of that moment, and I have never let it go, I dangle from it limp wherever it takes me.

A good friend, a talented artist, broke my heart when she told me she was giving up her life as an artist to take a job at a government agency, it was a regular check, and it offered benefits like health care.

I said nothing to her, it wasn’t my place to tell her what to do. But I thought this: you owe it to the world to just do it, to get on with what you are good at and want to do.

Oh, how I understand what drove her, and I even often envied her that regular paycheck and benefits, two things I have not had in decades and will never have now.

But I also wanted to cry for her; she was never happy again.

It has been a good trade-off for me. Happiness versus safety.

I believe this is root cause of my connection with Maria, and my great love for her. We have found our bliss, and cling to it every day.

I have walked on this path for a long time; I bow to my destiny. I never tell my life what I want to do; I listen to my life telling me who I am and where I need to be.

I am not so arrogant to believe that my life is good for everyone, or so needy than anyone else’s life is right for me.

I remember Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (The Gulag Archipelago) writing that nothing is more boring than someone with a career. Harsh and arrogant words, but they sometimes ring in my ears.

Everyone needs to pay their bills, but working only for money is just another kind of slavery to me.

For me, Thomas Merton has reaffirmed my purpose in life: “For each one of us, there is only one thing necessary: to fulfill our destiny.”

Who is willing to be satisfied with a job that expresses all his limitations? asked Merton in an essay:

“He will accept such work only as a ‘means of livelihood’ while he waits to discover his ‘true vocation’. The world is full of unsuccessful businessmen who still secretly believe they were meant to be artists or writers or actors in the movies.”

I’ve failed at many things in my life and learned a lot of hard lessons. But when I feel poorly about myself, I think of this destiny business and give thanks to me, and my Uncle Harry.

I got that right.

I am old enough now to be able to look back a long ways. I have fulfilled my destiny and will do that until I die.