Nothing in life actually happens the way you expect it to

This truism I have found to be true.

Though it's also true if you never leave your parents home likely nothing interesting might every happen to you ever too.

So, if you have a choice at one point or another doing something other than just stay at your parents home forever might be a good idea. Or else maybe your body goes on living and just your  soul dies a little more every day your body lives.

"Nothing Ventured Nothing Gained"

You usually have to risk something to have any gain of any kind in your life whether that gain is adventure or money or a better love life.

But, here's the thing. I'm 69 now and the loneliest I have ever been in my life was the last 7 years of my 2nd marriage while raising teenagers. This was the single loneliest time I can remember in my life.

So, loneliness doesn't always mean you are alone. You can also be very alone if the people you are around don't have much in common with you and your view of the world.

But then, the previous 7 years were likely the happiest of my life from age 32 to 39. Then the next 7 were the loneliest from 1987 until 1994 when my 2nd wife and I broke up.

But, paradoxically too, we had some of the most amazing adventures together the first 7 years we were together that took us (the 5 of us) to Canada, Idaho, Japan, India, Thailand, and Nepal and up into the Himalayas on a 50 mil trek to at least 10,000 feet in elevation 25 miles or more from the nearest rosd anything could drive on over suspension bridges over rivers up into the snow clad mountains with Rhododendrons, the STate Flower of Nepal growing all the way up to 9000 to 10,000 feet in the snow and high altitude fog and drizzle. And Bananas growing up to around 9000 feet too in Canyons protected from bad weather. You are so close to the equator there that weather is very different there at much higher altitudes than here in the U.S.

So, I guess what I'm saying here is life is very unpredictable and you may be doing in life things that might have seemed unimaginable to your parents 20 years before as you were growing up.

My father, chartered a ship, a sailing yacht from Canada and then sailed it down the coast from Vancouver all the way to Los Angeles and then didn't see land from Catalina Island for 40 days until they got to Tahiti and the Tuomoto archipeligo. And this was in 1939 when he was likely 23 with his wife and his brother.

So, the year he passed away 1985, we flew to Japan, then to Thailand, and then to Nepal and then hired a car to take us to the Indian border and then took buses and trains to BodhGaya, in Bihar State in India where we met our friend Geshe Lobsang Gyatso from Santa Cruz and received the Kalachakra from the Dalai Lama with 500,000 other people.