Dearest
@hollydolly
I desperately wish you were right, but you are not. I just don't have the energy anymore I used to have. Between 1999 and 2021, I hiked the 3,000 foot high Box Springs Mountain hundreds of times. I wouldn't make it anymore. Now I have to wear hearing aids. After my 1997 cataract surgeries, I had a fabulous vision. But now I have to wear again glasses for driving. In 2019 I tore muscles and tendons in my left hip and have been limping ever since. Do you want to hear more complaints? Well, I am looking at a glass of milk not as being half empty, but as being half full.
The late Rev. Schuller, founder of the Crystal Cathedral (now Christ Cathedral in Garden Grove,) had a tremendous influence on my life. He changed me to become a visionary optimist. The Serenity Prayer by Reinhold Niebuhr also influenced my life. I am not really religious, but religion can teach us much. However, I am taking religion with a grain of salt.
Travelling in the Holy Land for two weeks in the summer of 1997 gave me inspiration and filled me with awe. The Church of the Holy Sepulcher had no Lutheran Service, so I pretended to be a Catholic to join my religious wife in a Holy Mass. At the place where Jesus died, religious denominations are meaningless.
With increasing age, I am looking at life more in perspective: we are made of star dust, and eventually we will become again star dust. But let's enjoy life while we can. Aside from my family, my pups fill me with joy and happiness.
Jacaranda trees (left) used to bloom only in spring, but many of these trees are blooming right now. Confusion? Climate Change?
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I had to walk 40 minutes before starting to hike here uphill. I can't make it anymore. I rather go hiking now closer to my home.
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Left: My puppy gives me so much joy when I watch him running and jumping with boundless energy. But when he is chasing
my wife's chickens, then I give him a slap on his butt and say, "no, no, no" pointing to the chickens.
Right: My puppy challenged the Great Dane. But when the big guy stood up and barked, then my puppy quickly hid behind me.
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