Todd-
Your writing style, as ever, is excellent! You could easily have a future in writing (as in income-producing) if you chose to do so.
Two statements in your blog caught my eye: "...every step of a person's life has brought them to the place they stand today" and "... I am here because the road took me here."
These statements remind me of a thread we had not long ago about
destiny, whether our lives are pre-ordained to happen in a certain way, or whether we have a totality of free will, and our free choices determine how our lives play out. Of course the question was never answered in the thread because there is no answer.
I raise this point because the essence of your blog seemed to me to be posing, once again, in spirit at least, this question. Has each of us come to where we are today, especially in regard to our PCa experiences, as the result of our own free will choices, or did we come to be where we are simply because that was our inevitable destiny?
Or maybe Forrest Gump got it right:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=mscjvqtBWIQIndeed, as he said, "maybe it's both."
Maybe it works like this. U.S. Highway 441 runs north-south in my hometown of Gainesville, Fla. If I leave Gainesville travelling south on 441 and stay on it, then
inevitably it will take me into Ocala, Fla., 36 miles to the south. I can't change that.
But perhaps I also have the free will to
choose to turn off of 441 as I'm traveling on it, perhaps choosing to turn off on to a road to the east, leading me to Daytona Beach, or to the west, leading me to Tampa/St. Petersburg.
The choice of road is mine, but once I take a certain road, the consequences of going down that road are destined.
Surely it's true that the consequences of some of the actions that we take in our lives are destined, but at the same time perhaps, through our own wills, we can still choose the actions that result in those consequences.
So maybe Gump was right: "maybe it's both."