Life is easy. You think life is hard, yet life is easy. Life goes on as if by itself, sort of a wind-up toy.

You find yourself here on Earth. With or without your involvement, life takes strides. Your life takes strides. You can’t stop it. The sun rises, and the sun sets. You rise, and you go to sleep. You really can’t set life aside. You can’t control it all, and yet you have some say in it. You can commit yourself to certain directions. You can set your dial to what you want. Then, as with all dials, once you set it, you let it be and go about your business. Life has those elements that are as if you are riding a train.

You cannot set your life manually and manage every detail of it, for letting go is also a part of living life. Whether you let life be or you hold on tight, life goes its merry way and takes you with it. It is also part of life that you not know much ahead of time and be surprised at what life brings.

Once you lived in one town, and now you live in another. Or, once you lived in one country, and now you live in another country on the other side of the world. You may have made a conscious decision. Sometimes you wonder if you are the actual decider. You had say, yet it seems that somehow you got where you are as if propelled. You are riding in a jet plane to a destination known or unknown. You are all set either by your jurisdiction or by one kind of decree or another.

You never really end up. Life is ongoing. You don’t know when or where your last stop will be. The unexpected happens. The expected does not happen. Life isn’t really a toss-up, yet sometimes you wonder. Who knew twenty years ago where you would be now?

Who knew you would have eight children or would be childless? Who knew you would have the occupation you have now or would be out of work? Who can predict? Well, it is easy to make predictions, yet your predictions do not always come true. You may think your predictions have to come true, yet by what law do your predictions have to come true? Certainly not solely on your say-so.

Nevertheless, you don’t always want to amble along in life. There are additions and subtractions. In the final analysis, life tells you when. Life takes the course it takes and you trot along with it.

Even after the event, it is not possible to lay out all the steps that took you to where you are now, or to where you think you are now. You can only surmise. There seem to be an astounding number of connections and windings of the clock. In some ways, it may seem like an impossibility that your life took the turns it did. Only by some kind of magic does it seem possible. From rich man to poor man, or poor man to rich man, your life has been filled with impossibilities, yet here you are, picked up by life and plucked down somewhere.

You may know the time of day this minute, yet you don’t yet know the next minute.

Life keeps you in suspense. Life doesn’t let you get ahead. At the same time, you may not have traced the past with assurance either. Sometimes you have the feeling, despite your travels, that you have been riding a stalled train. Maybe the train is still, and it is the scenery that is moving. Sometimes you feel that you somehow have been at a distance, a stranger to yourself. You saw yourself moving as if from a distance, and you, the watcher, were not moving at all. You took a breath, and yet you were still as if life had gone along without your even being there, as if life on Earth were only a passing fancy.