The Will to Live

 Between age 21 and 25 I didn't really have the will to live just for myself. So, I had girlfriends since I was tall and handsome and my mother and grandmother raised me to be a gentleman and I had a 1968 Camaro that I bought new while I was making a lot of money with computers when I was 20 years old in Los Angeles County California.

But, what was missing was the will to live just by myself. I also found I didn't like living alone when my girlfriend from our church came out from Michigan and stayed in my bedroom so I went out and got my own apartment away from my parents when I was about 20 years old. But, I didn't like living alone even then. I had been an only child so this just reminded me of more loneliness than anything else. I met up with and old friend at dinner last night someone that was the girlfriend of my friend from about 1979 to 1983 here in Mt. Shasta. She was saying she owned her own home here in Mt. Shasta now and has lived alone in her own home now in Las Vegas and Mt. Shasta for 26 or 27 years. She said her boyfriend just died and he lived near to her but owned his own house. 

For me, I couldn't imagine this for myself likely because my success in life came from having my son who is now 52 years old. Somehow my lacking the will to live from 21 to 25 ended when my son was coming and I married his mother. I could live for my son and his mother but I couldn't just live for myself.

I think many young men then my age in their 20s in the 1970s were like me and many died before they discovered this about themselves before they were 25 years old from a variety of causes (everything from cars, suicide, drugs, Viet nam War you name it). 

So, I was very lucky to realize that I just needed a family of my own. And by age 29 I was also a single father and this helped keep me alive on the straight and narrow path too. Also, alone I was always a physical risk taker like rock climbing with ropes and pitons in Yosemite National Park and climbing mountains like Mt. Shasta to the top in 1970 and riding off road motorcycles across the desert near where my father and I built his retirement home from 1968 to 1980 when he and my mother retired there. (On weekends we built this house over 12 years from the ground up my father and I and some of his friends and mine.

So, after going through all this I'm very aware (especially in regard to young men) that without a family of my own I likely would not have survived my 20s because of being such a physical risk taker. I watched people I knew in the 1970s die from all sorts of things and it was awful to watch but at least I and my son and my now ex-wife and I all survived all this. In fact, my first ex-wife and I are still friends and are helping my 52 year old survive with an auto immune disease now. He has Myasthenia Gravis he got from Covid. He recently went to South Korea and he almost died there because he couldn't get the medicines he needed to survive so he came back about a week ago now.

So, the Will To Live is a big one for especially young men from 15 to 25 or 30 years old.

If you don't have this Will or find it somehow then you might not survive to 30 years old.

But, then again "How does anyone male or female survive to be 30 years old?"

I find it hard to believe that anyone survives to be 30 years old at all here on earth.

But, somehow we all muddle through to when we are more sensible after 30 if we are lucky.

By God's Grace