Today is the first day of...
... the rest of my life. That's what we said back in the 60s. Or was it the 70s? No matter. I found myself thinking it last Thursday, which, not coincidentally, was both my birthday and the first day of my retirement. Meaning, I suppose, that things will be different for me from here on. Because I'm not yet sure different in what way, a couple of days after Thursday I found myself experiencing what I could call an existential dilemma. (I might call it that, but won't, seeing as the description seems a bit melodramatic.) I found myself thinking about the upcoming time that I'll have for identifying what is meaningful for me to do--and then for doing it. My next thought was, what if I find that nothing is really meaningful? What if the silly sayings are right? You know them: You're born, you shop, you die. Life's a beach and then you die. Life's a bitch and then you die. Notice the last word in all of these cliches? Hmmm. Not very inspiring. You may be