I am sitting here contemplating birthday number fifty, only two days away and counting. As an INFP personality is want to do, I spend a lot of time in introspection. I spend so much time thinking that I rarely find myself doing. Sometimes the lack of taking action can be paralyzing. Alas, like all of my human brethren I trudge on, hoping and praying for salvation, railing against the injustices of the world, and wondering why God doesn't destroy us.

I sit and contemplate the physical part of my body. After a major heart surgery (Ross Procedure 1998), torn ACL, degenerative arthritis in both knees, and the usual bough ts of common illnesses, I find it amazing that I can still run 5k races, albeit at a snail's pace, lift weights, albeit not as heavy as before, and basically function pretty well. We adjust physically to handicaps pretty well. It is the emotional adjustment that can be taxing at times.

I think hitting forty and having the heart surgery was more of a midlife crisis. My grandfather died at 51 and my father at 58. This could be my decade or maybe I will continue the trend and make it to 65. Researching my ancestry I found a four times removed grandfather who fought in the War of 1812 and lived to be 96. Fought in a war and with no medicine lived to be 96. Go figure, but then again they didn't have the endless streams of pollution going into the water, food, and air, that we have today. That is why we need medicine to cope with the crap we have suffered our own bodies to endure.

Where is our Shangri-La? Where is justice? We can fly to the moon, but we cannot stop kooks bombing us. We can transplant hearts,but we cannot stop genocide. We can cure the one,but not the many. We Islamic terrosrist who claim they need to kill to protect God. Is God so weak he needs a feeble minded murderer to defend him against innocent women and children? My God is not weak, he does not need protecting. My God desires love, not hate. The god of Osama is not the true God of Christian, Muslims, or Jews.

I want to do good in the world. I have a friend whose entire family went on a mission to the Phillipines. As usual I sit and ponder, amazed at my own inability to act.