Finding Purpose

I have often wondered what it is that drives a person to keep moving along a path in life, and not just stopping and saying enough.  For most of us, life is marked with many minor pitfalls, not major successes.  Yet after years of trials, as you look back, hopefully the path has ascended more than it has descended.

My father, who is 87 as I write this, was born in Southern Ohio in 1917, the son of a poor couple.  His father, a set-up man, a gaffer in a vaudeville show, died when he was only two or three years old.  His mother, the daughter of a coal miner was barely 19 at the time, so she followed her parents to Kentucky to live.  There my father was raised for several years in the Appalachian coal country, shuttled  between three samll towns.  When he was only seven or eight, his grandfather was murdered and his life was torn apart again.  Once again his mother was on the move.  This time she headed for Ashland, Kentucky, where she met and married her second husband.  Life's pitfalls were still coming.