This was harder to find than it should have been.

Ray: “Oh my God….It’s my father…My God! I’d only seen him years later when he was worn down by life. Look at him. He’s got his whole life in front of him and I’m not even a glint in his eye. What do I say to him?”

I don’t think about the future a whole lot. That sort of what lead me to spending a whole lot of time and stress six months ago figuring out where I wanted a relationship to go and what I wanted to get out of one. I’ve had a pretty good idea where I haven’t wanted life to go, which is to become cynical. I over-quote dad saying “I don’t like people, but there are people that I like.” I’d like to say, that I like people. Granted, in a city of over 600,000 people, it’s easy to carve out a huge niche of people that I like. But I’m not cynical about humanity as a whole. I don’t want to become old, tired, distrusting, alone. I fight hard to not be alone, to sit down friends and remind them that they’re valuable to me and appreciated. This is more important to me than most, and a photograph of my father happy in his twenties hangs in my house to remind me that he once was, before I knew him.

There really isn’t a right way to live. We sort of figure this out as we grow from what life has thrown at us. The tangible comes and goes, I value the impact I make on others lives more than anything I could acquire. Learning makes my mind happy, other lives make my heart happy.