Older, but no wiser

In exchanging comments with Jean a couple of posts back, I said that the hardest part of trying to make decisions about the future is trying to figure what really matters and what doesn’t. And all the while, the lens through which to view the myriad possibilities that the future holds was sitting here on my desktop, in the form of a link to a quote from Augustine of Hippo:

“Once for all, then, a short precept is given thee: Love, and do what thou wilt:
whether thou hold thy peace, through love hold thy peace; whether thou cry out,
through love cry out; whether thou correct, through love correct; whether thou
spare, through love do thou spare: let the root of love be within, of this root
can nothing spring but what is good."

When viewed through that lens, the ‘what’ element of the future assumes much, much less significance. Do, as Augustine said, what thou wilt - working for this or that company, or for no company at all, in this or that town, was never the real issue. No; the real issue is how to live out Saint Augustine’s precept wherever and whenever and with whosoever I happen to be.

Uprooting the family and living on a shoestring would have been a piece of cake compared to this.