It is only when you cease doing

What you are programmed to do

That you can find

What you are meant to do.

Pico Iyer

Henry David Thoreau lived in the woods in solitude for two years to rid himself of non-essential worldly distractions, to focus and understand what is truly important in life.

I have been blessed with the same such solitude.

No, I haven’t spent time in the woods like Thoreau, but I have lived a much more simplified life over the last nine years taking care of Jess, much of the time in solitude.

Thoreau said, “I went into the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived…I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.”

They say that if the world would stop spinning the gravitational forces would generate a wind gust more than 10x that of the most dangerous hurricane mankind has ever encountered, stripping the world of all non-essential items.

I say a life-changing event is very similar.

It is like standing in a wind tunnel, holding on to your life, as all the non-essential items get blown away.

When the wind stops, and it will, what’s left are all the essential items to rebuild.

Which will be your will to live, your love of one another and your love for life.

Everything else is non-essential.

Being Jess’s caregiver has changed my life.

One could say being Jess’s caregiver has limited my lifestyle as either BettyJane or I are either always with Jess at all times, but I say being Jess’s caregiver has made me limitless. It has eliminated the non-essential aspects from my life and has allowed me to prioritize and has given me the time to do what I believe I was meant to do with my life.

To be unified with my soul.

There are vast amounts of time I spend in solitude, and like Thoreau, solitude has forced me to live deliberately and to suck the marrow out of life.

Divinely, a life-changing event has blessed me with solitude.

And solitude is responsible for teaching me the essentials in life.

Which are:

The will to live.

The love of one another.

And the love of life.

I believe if I did not experience a life-changing event in my life I would have gone through most, if not all of my life overlooking this finding.

And what a shame that would have been

Richard Wilbur was dead on when he said,

“The strength of the genie comes from being in the bottle.”

Being limited has allowed me to tap into my limitless soul.

Click For all of JohnA Passaro’s published works