Every day I find I have to define myself, in my own mind, my own head, before I go face a world determined to define me. To tell me I am “left” or “right.” To tell me I need tests and pills. To tell me I need discounts and checkups. And insurance and retirement funds. To tell me I should stop learning, stop loving, stop growing and shrink into the sad and small expectations of so much of our world. To tell me how I should grow older and die.

How rarely to I read or see things or meet people whose message is for me to grow, to experiment, to move ahead, to try new things, to be brave. The world defines itself this way: I am a dangerous place filled with horror and danger and suffering. Be frightened. The news of the world is grim, filled with travail and loss.

But that is not my world. I am responsible for my world. I decided how old I am. Or am not. What I can do. What my horizons and boundaries are. Whether I can have a spiritual life on my own terms, not only in their big and expensive buildings, accepting their rigid and unyielding dogmas.

Other people will not define me, even as the world around me looks for labels to put on me and boxes to put me in.

Every day is a choice. I make my own news. I seek a life that is meaningful, fulfilled, and bounded by growth, ceativity, love, friendship, spirituality, chance and hopefully, by compassion and understanding. And change. I think that’s my world as I define it.