My Santiago

'Most of us live as if we're not gonna die'*

actor Alan Alda, 83 years of age in 2019 and immersed in the stuff of life and comfortable with Parkinson’s and face blindness - prosopagnosia )

“I am more comfortable with the uncertainty of reality than I am with well wishes and hope”, * With reality, Comes the bitter - sweet beauty of life, And the nobility of living forward in a world - without certainty, Without semblance of guarantee that the next day dawns for us to wake to, getting busy with the reassuring mundanity of the chores of living;

With reality comes beauty, sadness, Shared pain, Stories - through conversations - of unspoken lives,

Managed hurt, Quiet heroism,

The shared circumstances of the world we inhabit;

With reality comes ikigai, ** And the stages of quietly living with fear, uncertainty, Yet, waking up to those incremental victories that structure our day – measuring existence, Giving life nuance, texture, Bringing full meaning – to place and time.

*Alan Alda, Actor ** Reason for being