A Man Asked Over 100 People Of All Ages What They’ve Learned In Life So Far

I love life and the plethora of things to learn from science to literature. Life can be a magnificent learning experience if one wants it to be. Yes, looking out each day at the turning of the seasons; growing, changing and yes even dying as everything on earth that is alive from insects to man experiences the journey of it and its end.

Having said that I do think life can be hard. It is hard for those who were not blessed with riches or for those who were not blessed with a functioning body or a loving family. It is not hard for everyone but everyone at some time will experience his/her decay. That is hard. It is hard to go from the independence and strength of youth to the dependence and weakness of old age. I hesitate to say that I would repeat the performance and yet I feel blessed that I was given the chance to see the magnificence of it all which is after all bestowed by chance or fate.

Life has been a hard ride for me. There was the pain of others close to me I witnessed and my own pain I had to endure and still do. Yet, as I sat in 5th grade class I think I realized then how lucky I was to live in a nation where I could read what I wanted, say what I wanted and ask any question under the sun of my teachers that I wanted. So yes, I have been blessed but to lose one's agility and to lose those I love or to be torn from them myself may preclude my wanting to repeat the experience again.

It is rather silly to think on this question because who of us will have that do over chance? We are born and then we die. What we do with our lives in between is our own choice. It is why I have dedicated this segment of my life to be a voice for the poor, the powerless, the rejected and the infirm so, paraphrasing Robert Kennedy, they will know someone sees their pain and wants to lessen it; someone sees wrongs and wants to right them; someone sees hate and wants to show love because after all I believe this is the one life we get so why not make this life count for something more than just one's self.