When it comes down to it, I think life is very much about our choices.  In fact, I think choices are my life. I worked hard for much of my life to get to the top. In the second half of my life, I discovered the idea of falling upward.

In a way, I think it’s the key to spirituality.

Maria and I have both always lived outside of the ten. I’ve guessed that our choices differ from 90 percent of people anywhere, and accepting that is a big step towards having an identity we get, even love.

We have callings, not jobs. We don’t celebrate holidays with our families. We don’t work for money or s security.

Because we love our jobs, we have not worked in years. I’m working hard to accept the choices of other people. Some people love Trump. For many people, family is everything. Our civic lives celebrate blaming everyone but ourselves. Our faith is inward and internal; we don’t go to temples, churches, synagogues, or mosques.

I used to laugh at cat people, but now I respect their love and compassion. I used to scoff at people who disagreed with me, but now I see that learning to respect people who disagree with me is the spiritual challenge of the time.  I used to wince at the excuses of people who rescue animals. Now I seem to be one of them.

Life is humbling if you work at it.

Learning to respect others is a gift to me, one I am still working on and will always be working on. It doesn’t seem to be an ingrained human instinct.

My life is founded on choices, good and bad. I choose to leave my old life behind and build a new one. I decided to get divorced. I chose to live in the country.

I chose to be a different kind of grandfather. I decided to love my life rather than stash money for my future. I decided not to let any politician dominate or shape my emotional life. That was a big choice and a good one. I chose to walk away from my mother and my father in order to save myself.

I respect my choices.

I can’t accept my choices if I can’t respect the choices of other people. That’s the hard part but the necessary part.

I am falling upward, going down to get up. “It is when I am weak that I am strong,” Paul said in the Bible. Amen.