Press on regardless. Secret of life

It really doesn't matter who you are or how much money you have, we are all at the whim of something far beyond our imagination. We can hide ourselves in caves like hermits, save up every penny we earn, buy gold and hoard it, eat a limited diet, pack away two years of food in a bomb shelter, wear air filtering masks, drink only special water from bottles, avoid other people, jog 10 miles a day, never touch dirt, visit the doctor over every little thing, practice Yoga or some other meditational method, get every disease preventing inoculation available, drink one glass of red wine, two cups of coffee and take a hundred vitamins and unexplainable issues still happen to us. That's life!

Most of us carry on every day, doing our best to protect ourselves in healthy ways both physically and financially as well as spiritually, it's the smart thing to do, but stuff still happens doesn't it? In the past I had a habit of collecting and hoarding pencils and pens. When I was in the second grade my teacher took away a handful of pencils I had in my desk and never gave them back. The school rule was "only one pencil to a student." The next day my pencil broke and I didn't have time to get another one, sharpen it and finish my assignment. I was devastated! After that I used to keep an extra one in my shoe just in case. As I grew older I always made sure I had a box of pencils stashed away ready to handle any crisis whatsoever concerning pencils. I kept that box near me in a special place for years and years. During the writing of my book, "Joe's Story: The Book of a Lifetime" my habit was to write down any sudden thoughts and type them later. One day a thought occurred to me and my pencil broke. I searched and searched for my special stash of pencils but to no avail. I had put it in such a safe place even I couldn't find it. A strange thing happened, I didn't panic, I wasn't devastated and the world didn't come to an end. I had lost my fear of things I couldn't control. I had grown up and learned to handle them as they presented themselves.

It is always prudent to prepare for emergencies but maybe it's just as important to be prepared to deal with whatever life sets upon us that we can't control and keep going anyway. Pressing on regardless. One step at a time.