A PREDICTABLE LIFE

In every life there comes a time when you feel you are standing on the top of a mountain, looking down on a plain below. And that plain stretches out to the horizon and beyond, as far as your eyes will ever see. Life, from that point on, will be predictable and consistent. There may be some small highs and lows, but for the most part it will go on and on, for the rest of the your life, in a predictable, unchanging way. Sure there will be changes, small changes, but nothing horribly or terribly dramatic. People in your life today will grow old and some will die. Things in your life today will get used up and discarded and replaced. But your life, your lifestyle, essentially will never change. Once you have reached the top of that mountain you've been climbing -- the peak could be a career pinnacle, or finally marrying the woman of your dreams, having the family you always wanted, finally completing a marathon, etc. -- there is nothing left but the flat, uninspiring plain below.
And you know it. In your heart and mind, you know it.
For some people, that is reassuring. They like knowing life will be predictable and consistent for the rest of their days. For others, though, the thought of a life so predictable, so laid out in front of them, is suffocating, depressing and more frightening than any change life might throw their way. They want the challenges and difficulties ahead to be more than just the occasional worn-out washer and dryer, or a truck that finally gives up the ghost and no longer will start, or a pet that dies of old age. They want life to have some excitement, some trials and tribulations, some peaks and valleys along their route. And they don't want to be able to see their future laid out in front of them, with no chance to turn off and discover something new in themselves, in others, in the world they inhabit.
And if the chance arrives for them to jump off this flattened path, to choose a different road, one filled with mountains and valleys and hills and curves, they will gladly take it. They don't want to know everything that lies ahead, they embrace the unknown and the unexpected.
For if that chance does not arrive, or that road turns out to be a dead end and they must turn back, there is no life for them on that plain, on that flat, even road from here to their death. That is no life at all, but mere existence for existence's sake. And who among us wants to reach old age just to prove he/she can do it? Where is the fun in that?
So, from where you stand today, what do you see ahead? More mountains to climb and valleys to explore, or mile after flat and boring mile of plain?