The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step (BTW it can end really badly)

Experience with anything is a curse and a blessing - both have the same outcome in that surprises at work, in relationships or life in general become fewer and fewer the older you get. When I was younger the uncertainty of my life scared me more than it excited me. The younger me flailed about trying to find something (anything) that worked out the way I THOUGHT it should rather than my experience (such as it was) told me it would.

Eventually I figured out what works for me and progressed through a blessed and fortunate life that has far exceeded what I thought I'd ever experience. During that journey I studied religion and philosophy formally and informally for a while and tried to assign value to those experiences through consideration of those principals that resonated with my particular sensibility. I used to consider myself an existentialist of the "nothing matters and what if it did " school of thought.

This was an easily defensible position (sort of like being an agnostic) in that the burden of proof as it was always remained on those who questioned that outlook and not on me for having it in the first place. One day I figured out that I am a coward for maintaining the self delusion that somehow I understood everything through that narrow and ultimately pointless perspective. Did I have an epiphany? some sort of religious conversion - nope sorry about that. What I did realize is that the big questions are just that, fricking big questions that no one will ever answer with any confidence. Oh and I'm fine with that.. magic remains in the world.

So now I like to stand outside my house in the country these cold nights and stare into the majesty of space and wonder why I ever worried about anything? I am free and getting free(er) every day.

"I used to think it was a terrible thing that life was so unfair. Then I thought, 'what if life were fair, and all of the terrible things that happen to us came because we really deserved them?' Now I take great comfort in the general unfairness and hostility of the universe."
J. Michael Straczynski