i know this isnt really a big deal its just a thought that keeps buzzing around in my head like a fly i cant swat away i guess im old now 76 in december and maybe thats why everything feels so heavy suddenly im traveling you know seeing the world a bit after all those years in the classroom and before that in the uniform its different out here than the small towns i grew up in the ones where everyone went to the same brick church on sunday you see things you really do i was in a temple just last week in thailand all these vibrant colors and the smell of incense and everyone bowing with such devotion such peace on their faces and then yesterday i saw a small group meditating by a river in vietnam the quiet intensity of it all it got me thinking about my own faith the one i was born into the one my mother pressed into me like a uniform you just put it on and never question the fit and i just—i suddenly wondered if i would have chosen it if i had been born somewhere else somewhere without those particular hymns and sermons i mean whats the statistical probability that the exact faith inherited by an infant is objectively the correct one a low probability extremely low almost statistically improbable if you consider the sheer volume of human spiritual practices across all cultures and millennia my mother always spoke of divine providence but it feels more like geographical happenstance a matter of latitude and longitude more than anything else it’s not that i doubt god or anything like that not exactly but it feels like the foundation i built my entire spiritual life on might just be… a house built on sand on the wrong beach entirely and the thought of all those years of earnest prayer all that rigid adherence to doctrine it just feels a bit hollow now a bit like following orders without understanding the objective and i dont have many years left to figure it out do i to truly discern if this belief system was an authentic internal calling or just a cultural imprint a kind of psychological conditioning from an early age i dont know if i even have the energy to rebuild anything anyway the discipline is still there the habit of it but the conviction—that’s gone AWOL on me and i dont think its coming back