Ron--You are a master of acceptance...and we both learned the hard way, that the only thing we really can control to any degree, is how we react/respond to the next situation life places us in. Personally, I think this is the best venue for free will, due to the influence of social and mass media, not to mention genetics and family/peer input.

Sixty-two years ago, I was on a path of success that I never thought I would be on given my humble beginnings. But then, accepting the surgeon’s knife to correct a small problem of weakness in my left arm and hand, I was paralyzed from the neck down until I regained my ability to walk, but not to write with my shriveled hands and arms.

Through six months of self introspection, I realized that I would have to lower my expectations for my life and that’s what I did… but fortunately, still excelling because I always found a way to overcome whatever change was happening to my body, like the long deterioration and creeping paralysis that has me far different from the way I was the time I went back to college, confident that I could finish and get some work even though there was a lot of discrimination to disability in those days and I felt the brunt of it many times.

It was not my seeking higher ground, but my willingness to accept changes that required me to come up with some other work around way of getting things done… Often using technology to do it, that got me to the next level. Until finally, just when I was prepared to take over leadership, politics and jealousy prevented me from moving forward in my career and I gladly retired to writing at 69 years of age.

Since then with 16 books of fiction and memoir, hundreds of articles and stories, nearly 2000 poems and communication with many, many other authors and readers, I am content not to seek the next level, knowing that the next level for me will be closing my eyes for the last time.

But so many others will benefit from following your simple but powerful prescriptions for life.

Ron