# Chapter 172

Quotes running through our minds can urge us in the right direction. Two that I have running in my mind this morning is Anne Dillard’s “how we live our days is how we live our lives” and “the man on the mountaintop did not fall there.” Some days I don’t seem to have an original thought in my head and instead I have these loops that are running and they own my thoughts for the morning. The first one is an older quote that Bernie introduced me to years ago, and the longer I think about it the more it’s power grows. We all have a pattern to our days and intentionally or not, this collection of patterned days is essentially the pattern of our lives. Is this pattern, is this collection of days, what I want my life to be like? Do I want more? Less? Different? Decide now because once again “how we live our days is how we live our lives.” You are living them and this is your life. You are making these choices, you are choosing this life.

And that will ultimately determine which mountaintop you end up on. No you did not fall there. No you weren’t dropped there, instead you climbed and strove and lived those days in those ways and thus you have the life you have and the mountaintop upon which you stand. I regret my early choices of how I lived my days, but I did better as I went along. I stopped coasting and went for it all. I left two perfect jobs that had become coasting and I struck out for the unknown. Now I am regularly surprised by my days, and the mountaintop I find myself on. I traded continuity and the well known for the change-the-world factor and the unknown. Its not for the faint of heart.