STEP OUT OF ROUTINE, AND THINK!

Jon Katz, Running to the Mountain: A Journey of Faith and Change (New York: Villard, 1999) ("When it comes to change, I'm not a detached observer; I'm a partisan. It can happen: human beings can look inward, face the realities of their existences, and--sometimes--alter enrich, or transform the circumstances under which they live. They can dream, and--sometimes--they can pursue and realize their visions. Few of us can have much influence on the changes in the world beyond our own experiences, the greater physical, economic, or international upheavals. But dealing with the other kind of change, the personal variety, is a nearly universal human drama and preoccupation--and sometimes the stuff of real adventure." Id. at xi-xii (paragraph breaks deleted). "The central conceit of boomers is that they can control the world they live in, by one means or another. They not only believe it, they insist upon it. They think they can and should create perfect children who lead lives free of failure, risk, and pain. All the harder the fall when it does." Id. at 16. "There are times in one's life, those key moments Merton called journeys of the soul, that I might more prosaically call passages--marriage, divorce, children, moving, illness, workplace crises and challenges, the prospect of friendship, moral dramas , and spiritual decisions--when one simply has to stop, step out of ones routine, and take the trouble to think. It's not a luxury but an obligation: how else to even try to make measured, considered decisions base on deliberation and self-awareness rather than on impulse or fear?" Id, at 65.).