Saturday is my 74th birthday. It has become a sober as well as a celebrating time for me.  For the past seven years, before the elated moments of celebrating with Susie, and the joyous gorging myself on her cheesecake, I always feel deeply introspective, dive real deep, about my birthday.  I shouldn’t be here.  Saturday will be exactly seven years, one month, two weeks, six days that I’ve been living on the edge of life.  The early morning of that day, Friday, September 14, 2007, the second day of Rosh Hashanah, was for me not just the beginning of a new year, but the start of a new life.  That day was the day I should have died.  That day was the day I experienced an unexpected massive cerebral hemorrhage from which 95% die or survive with serious mental and physical impairments.  And, here I am.  Alive.  Unscathed.  I vividly remember the neurosurgeon tearfully telling me six weeks after my head exploded, on the afternoon of November, 1, 2007, the very day of my 67th birthday, that he’s never seen a “walking 5% miracle.”   His clean bill of health and promise that I was not a ticking time bomb were not too bad birthday gifts!

I also came to realize that merely asking questions has a motivating, generating, maybe even inspirational, power.  You see, I don’t stop thinking, don’t stop wondering, don’t stop being grateful, don’t stop going deeper inside, don’t stop seeing keener outside, don’t take anything for granted, don’t stop living.  I don’t stop realizing that the view from that edge is so much clearer than the view that most of us have.  It creates new realities.  It puts so much in better perspective.  It sharpens what seems so indistinct; it brings up close what seems to be so afar; it makes reachable what seems to be so inaccessible; it makes simple what seems so complicated; it makes extraordinary what seems so ordinary; it makes beautiful what seems so otherwise.   It brings into focus what is really important.