ON A DARK DESERT HIGHWAY

"On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair. Warm smell of colitas rising up through the air. Up ahead in the distance, I saw a shimmering light. It grew heavy and my sight was dim, had to stop for the night."

Indeed, "Welcome to the Hotel California." I've forever loved that song of The Eagles. On many a journey, after hours and hours of hard riding, I find myself singing its lovely refrain to myself. "You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave." Deep. But wrong.

We can leave or check out of any situation any time we like. True, we must be sensitive to others needs and feelings. But we are not imprisoned by addiction, which is really what that Eagles song is about.

We are free. And I love freedom. Today at my office we enjoyed a Happy Hour with our new Legal Assistant. We played Trivial Pursuit and drank a lovely bottle of Shiraz. I found it funny when one of the younger members of the firm described me as one who never dealt well with authority figures. I could have told her that years ago.

So I sit here tonight aglow with the sense of victory that one gets when they wipe everyone else out at Trivial Pursuit. (As if it meant something?)

But really I sit here tonight thinking how fabulous life is. Every single day brings a new adventure. The other day I walked into a silly little auto dealership: two hours later I walked out with a new client and an offer of a guitar gig. How bizarre is that?

Everything we do is simply another stitch in the pattern we weave. Everything is connected. When we meet a complete stranger yet know them completely, it is just the warp and woof of the fabric coming back to us. We made this fabric long ago. Now we wear it.

So whether we talk of Yin and Yang, of Karma, or of a Dark Deserted Highway, we can leave but we can't totally "Check Out." Our future is in our own hands. We can never abandon who we are, but we can make the future our own.