Freedom means the opportunity to be what we never thought we would be-Daniel J. Boorstin

This is the page heading on Good News Network today.

When I read it it made me think about just how dreary and boring I thought my life would be as a 3 or 4 year old in Seattle. It was cloudy or rainy or snowy all the time. The buildings in 1950 to 1952 were often grey and dreary. I was an only child raised by my mother, father and my mother's mother and I didn't see how life would be worthwhile being an adult. It was bad enough being a child.

Even into adulthood I saw being an adult as a punishment after the joys? of being a child. However, then the 1960s happened and life got interesting. It wasn't that it was good interesting, it just got interesting.

I watched people starting to build skateboards from a piece of wood first a 2 by 4 stud with metal wheels nailed or screwed on the bottom at home. This was about 1960 so you could "Surf" on the sidewalks with your home made skateboard. Also, just before this time all sorts of fun children's stuff was invented like Frisbees that your dog might catch in the air and hula hoops and motorcycle risers for bicycle. I put a motorcycle riser handlebar on my bicycle which was a green single speed Schwinn bike. I got a newspaper route at age 10 delivering newspapers 7 days a week. I would come home and wrap my papers with rubber bands (if there was no rain). But, if there was rain I was given plastic bags and rubber bands to wrap my newspapers I was delivering with.

Then the Bay of Pigs happened in Cuba and then the 7 Days in May when we all thought we were going to get nuked. Then President Kennedy and Martin Luther King were assassinated and people stopped believing anything the government said after that which was what caused people to turn against the government during the Viet Nam war because "Why were we fighting in Viet Nam to begin with?"

So, the point I"m trying to make here is that the future will often create in your life things you never expected to have to deal with. So, in this sense the 1960s were exciting and terrifying but never boring.

Young people struggled to stay alive and not die in the Viet Nam War and created songs of protest and tried to live better lives than the boring lives of their parents. Some of us succeeded and actually lived the title of this article like myself and some of my friends.

We didn't die in Viet Nam. We didn't die in all sorts of horrific ways like friends often did. We were able to live our dreams and find opportunities where none existed before. We were able to have amazing lives and live on far into the future beyond our wildest dreams. Our lives became adventures!

But, what is an adventure? "It is a difficult situation well met."

An adventure means you survived something that might have killed other people. And then you have stories to tell your children and grandchildren about a life well lived and being well traveled and actually having done interesting things with your life that you NEVER imagined you could do when you were growing up here in the U.S.

By God's Grace