A Willingness

The choices you make add up to the person you become. Many of mine have pointed me toward a life that must seem small, to an outside viewer, but one that is full of interest all the same. This last is a good thing, given that what I do is what I feel I must do. If you attempt a life based on a sense of responsibility to the world, you find how little you can do. But if the little you can do is important to you, then you must do it.

So you end up doing something like writing poems in the morning and digging dandelions in the afternoon, while the two-ton behemoths fueled by American debt trundle past the front of the house.

I was thinking this morning of the times it has seemed such a ridiculous enterprise, to be growing a few rows of grapes in a backyard that has room for them, but not all that much room. Yet growing grapes here was a matter that called out to be done: so Martha and I undertook it, hoping to be doing right.

Doing right has meant in my life a willingness to make mistakes. The making of mistakes is often the only open option, in pursuing the ideas that arise in a life. If you go ahead and make them, then you have accomplished something.