Having just completed my 59th. year I engaged in what many do as the anniversary of their birth comes around, I reviewed my life and marveled at how blessed I have been and even feel a bit bewildered at how that can be.  I have done nothing spectacular, I have led at times as Thoreau  said “a life of quiet desperation” and at one time these feelings took me to places in my mind that are better left uninhabited.  I am fortunate because I was able to get through and out of those dark places while many take up permanent residence.  Of course I had help but in the end it is the individual that makes the change. Thoreau believed that the “quiet desperation” was resignation to ones life predicaments and he is correct to a point.  I think that the quiet desperation that people feel is a path that leads to a fork in the road; the left fork leads to resignation and the right fork leads to acceptance.  Resignation is the negative or the evil twin of acceptance.    Resignation keeps you where you are, without hope, bored and feeling a whole lot of self pity.  Acceptance allows you to move on and change those things you want to change. I cannot point to a time when that light clicked on for me.  I guess it could be better described as a dimmer switch slowly being turned on.  It just occurred to me that all the times when I was considered as being not the brightest bulb in the package, it was wrong.  It was the switch. Wow! What a metaphor.  I should write that down.  That dimmer switch can only be turned up or down by you.  Not your family, not your neighbor or teachers and definitely not the government or church.  It is you, the individual. I know that it isn’t popular in our current society to talk about one’s faith or belief in God and it really doesn’t matter if you do not believe in God.  Some may not believe in gravity but it is there as a force.  I am not a church attendee or an evangelizer but I am a strong believer in God and Jesus Christ.  I am forever thankful to Him for all my blessings.  My family, my friends, my home and all the amenities that life in the United States makes available are blessings from our Creator.  I mention this because in my reflections I have found that the faith that I feel affects the level of that switch.  Does that mean that those who choose not to hold that faith are in the dark? No.  But they are more susceptible to resign themselves to life’s predicaments.  It is the path of least resistance or so they think. Many people who know me feel that I see life as being black and white and no gray area.  I do see life in terms of right or wrong but I also recognize that there is a gray area.  That gray area is an area of transformation between black and white.  Most of my life has been in the gray area but I am sure I am moving in the correct direction.  How do I know this?  That’s easy.  My life is good and is getting better.  This in spite of the current state of our country and the departure from good.  It has been headed in the wrong direction for quite awhile and sometimes I fear that it will not correct itself.  The past twenty years we have been in a downward spiral which has been accelerating.  When and where it will end who knows? This I do know, my next 59 years will not be as good as the past.