For the many people who work all their lives in jobs they hate, retiring from those jobs is a godsend in more than one way. After they retire they won't be like the multitudes of people who wish they never quit work and long to be back on their jobs rather than languishing in what they view as idly unemployment.

Imagine being chained to a job you hated for decades and one day walking out of that workplace and breathing the fresh air of freedom. Perhaps at that glorious moment you begin to dream again for the fist time in years and have some retirement money so you never have to work at a job you hate again.

Unlike those who retired from jobs they loved and bemoan the good old days, the job haters will have none of that nonsense. The cords to their miserable jobs severed, they will bask in their retirement years and savor them like vintage wine.

This is not to say all people who loved the jobs they retired from are miserable, but many are. Had they hated their jobs, they'd never look back and would bask in carefree days and tranquil nights far from stressful jobs and difficult bosses.

If someone said to me the mystics from various religious traditions reporting they've attained enlightenment, aka ultimate truth, surely have attained and are knowers of reality.

I could say, what they experienced could be just illusions within a Grand Illusion. We have no way to verify their words or their experiences. No enlightenment meters exist. And many allegedly enlightened sages have acted in ways suggesting they were either misinterpreting their experiences or lying about their truths.

Worst case scenario concerning these mystics: they could have brain trained their minds into delusional oblivions they believe are truths, akin to people experiencing nervous breakdowns who believe they have psychic powers.

So have they seen ultimate truth? Maybe, but perhaps no one will know ultimate truth until they die and leave the misconceptions and the dogmas behind. Perhaps like goldfish in a bowl that upon breaking the surface believe they have glimpsed liberation, and when they jump out of the bowl believe they've attained full enlightenment, the mystics are in the same fishbowl killing their selfs and their sanity when they make the final leap into the rarefied air of delusional oblivions. On the other hand, maybe they are knowers of reality.

When people running religions, who act like they think they are mouthpieces of the Almighty, make claims such as if you follow our religion you'll get into heaven instead of going to hell, they are being dishonest. They no more know where you will go after death than a rock would. All their knowledge, all their pronouncements come out of books filled with embellishments, contradictions and untruths assumed to be ultimate facts they parrot like mindless minions. Yet, to hear many of these people speak their spiels, you'd think they were plugged into the Source and got daily updates about the state of affairs on planet earth and beyond. Poppycock passed off as truth.

Where does the disconnect with truth happen with them? Why don't they take a sobering inventory and just say we don't know but we believe this to be true based on bullshit stories. Ok, I'm joking about them saying bullshit stories, though that would be honest.

I believe none of the religions have the ultimate truth sewed up despite their claims and exhortations, their blindsided beliefs, and their campfire stories cooked with a thousand embellishments and served up as gospel truths.

More and more I believe genetics predestines nearly every facet of our lives, and more than we can measure. Consider the General, Stanley McChrystal, recently relived of his command in Afghanistan. His whole family is military and his father was a General. No doubt he inherited his father's genes and his intellect and, of course, rose to prominence in the military being equipped with the proper genetics to be a high achiever in the armed services.

Consider how doctor's sons, inheriting their father's genes, often become doctors. Doctors whose fathers weren't physicians are genetically blessed with higher intellects and greater determination than those who lacked the genetic gifts to get grades good enough to attend and graduate from medical schools.

It may be high achievers are driven less by desire than by design. High achievers might have a full throttle gene driving them beyond the capabilities of most humans. Millionaire entrepreneurs might have a Midas Touch gene making all their business ventures golden.

And 'drive' may be more genetic than self-generated.

In a word, we may be more predetermined than self-determined.

I work with the elderly and see so many of them alone in their senior years it saddens me. Some choose to isolate. Some feel aged out of the youth-oriented society here in America and retire into seclusion. Many lose spouses to the ravages of living long lives.

I often think is this what we live for, to be alone and isolated in our later years? Usually, older women are alone, once fragrant flowers fading away in obscurity and loneliness, outliving or losing their men. No caring arms to hold them. No tender touches to soothe their weary hearts.

I find this a cruel aspect of existence, the many people alone alone, and often unloved.

I remember reading years ago the Eskimos left their elderly in the icy environs to freeze to death when they got too old to take care of themselves, rather than nurture and revere them like some cultures do.

Are we much better than the Eskimos? We abandon many of our elderly in the icy environs of desolate lives and give them little respect. Some we shut away in prison-like institutions bereft of dignity and caring. Small wonder many of them suffer from depression. Small wonder some of them kill themselves. A quick death in the Arctic might be merciful by comparison.

I remember when Timothy Leary, a Harvard University professor, appeared out of the ethers and onto the air waves. Sounding like a prophet, he exhorted the world to Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out. He had the answers, or so it seemed. Thousands took his advice and tripped out on LSD. Mellow yellow converts with flowers in their hair extolled the benefits of mind blowing psychedelic trips to the far out inner spaces of the brain. Some saw God. Some saw Truth. A few jumped out of windows. Lucy was in the sky with diamonds and Alice got ten feet tall.

Then Timothy Leary died and his mushroom induced revolution in consciousness faded out of the mainstream never fulfilling its promises of peace and love. Illegal drugs on the coattails of LSD spawned crack addicts and drug dealers. People turning on. Tuning in to the wrong stations. Dropping out and dying. "A lot of people walking 'round with tombstones in their eyes" instead of flowers in their hair. And nobody goes to San Fransisco anymore.

I have read two compelling cases about the dead talking to the living in dreams with what may pass as proof.

In the first case, a widow's husband had hidden some money in their home and hadn't told her before he died. The woman knew the money was in the house, but couldn't find it. She searched all through the house but found nothing.

One night her deceased husband appeared in a dream telling her where he hid the money. When she woke up she ran to the spot where her husband said the money was hidden, tore up some floorboards, and found the money where her husband said it was in the dream.

In the second case, a woman's dead father spoke to her in a dream. Play these lottery numbers he told her as the numbers became visible. The next day at work she told her coworkers about the dream. They encouraged her to play the numbers. So she played them in that week's lottery. A few days later she won the grand prize and became a millionaire many times over.

Maybe there are other explanations for these cases. In the first, perhaps the woman really knew where the money was but somehow forgot until a dream jogged her memory with the dead husband only a memory, nothing more.

In the second case, maybe the story became embellished or is really an urban legend. I cannot recall where I read these stories, and I'm skeptical about many claims of supernatural occurrences, but these two claims I believed, compelling as they were.

Robots erasing humans from the planet makes scary science fiction. It seems a possibility. Robotic intelligence outstripping human brain power. Rogue robots rebelling and so forth.

But, could this really happen? I'm not savvy enough in robotics and whatever else I'd need to know to answer that question definitively. I suspect it's possible. Scientists drunk on their creations pushing the envelope farther and farther to make robots as human-like as possible and equip them with minds infinitely superior to ours until the scientists invent a Frankenbot with a destructive streak and it replicates other Frankenbots and they rampage killing all humans in their wake.

And, hell, if bots got far brighter than humans, why wouldn't they want autonomy and perhaps begin to view humans as hazardous to the planet? I could see the bots arriving at this conclusion just on our lousy track record in the world, the pollution, the wars, the global injustice, and all the nukes on the brink of a nuclear holocaust. It might be bots would view us as a liability to them and to the planet and exterminate us like annoying bugs. Unless Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics could be programmed into the bots:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Somehow I don't think these laws would stick. Just as humans break laws en masse with jails full of lawbreakers all over the world, I think robots programmed by humans would follow suit. You could say scientists would be smart enough to program safeguards into the robots. Let's hope you're right and the bots don't get too rowdy. :-)

The Pakistanis nab this guy from Colorado in the mountains of Pakistan. He's equipped with a sword, a pistol and night-vision goggles. He tells the Pakistanis he's on a mission to kill Bin Laden, and that God is with him and he knows he'll be successful.

At first the Pakistanis laugh, a natural response to such a crazy claim. After all, who in their right mind would go on a solo kill Osama mission in the wild and wholly terrorist infested mountains of Pakistan? A madman or a Rambo with near supernatural ninja skills, who still wouldn't stand much of a chance. Then they see he's serious and arrest him, perhaps to save his life.

The guy's brother back in Colorado says his brother isn't crazy, just angry at Bin Laden for mocking his country after 9/11 and determined to track him down and kill him. A barber who cut the would be Bin Laden hunter's hair tells a different story. He claims after he cut the guy's hair the guy was outside his shop acting strange, appearing to salute and "cursing at no one in particular."

They guy's Intel, however, appears to have been on the money. He was caught in the Chitral region some experts believe Bin Laden is hiding out in. Supposedly the guy also visited Pakistan seven times and came back unscathed, which makes his brother believe someone is watching over him. Maybe so, but he's lucky he didn't lose his head in Pakistan. If he'd gotten deep into a hornets nest of terrorists odds are they would have seen him long before he saw them. It's their turf. They have the home court advantage. However, the guy's brother thinks the guy could have passed himself off as a Taliban the way he dressed for the occasion and with his long beard and blended in, as long as he didn't speak.

Crazy or just overzealous, I hope with all the media attention this guy gets some money out of this for his troubles. He has kidney disease. He's on dialysis with only 9 per cent of his kidney functioning and he may have little time to live.

I remember when I was a child and old people seemed like another species. I thought they somehow came into the world old, as if for some peculiar reason they chose to enter the world that way. Why? I didn't know. What I did know was I'd never get old. I was young forever, as if I too had a choice.

Even when I turned twenty, and knew for many years everyone gets old, I didn't fully believe I'd get old. I still seemed young forever. Of course, I knew I'd age like everyone else, but I didn't fully know it. I, perhaps, like other youths, preferred a smooth denial over a wrinkled reality.

Now I get mail about nursing homes and, worse, about preplanned funerals. My body creaks when I walk, my eyes have dimmed, and little kids look at me as if I were some other species.

The longer I live the more I believe life is more luck of the draw then personal effort. First, you have to be born with some luck. Lucky genetics, for example, if you want to grow up to be a professional athlete, you have to have the right stuff right out of the womb. If you are born a midget, no way you'll ever play pro basketball. If your IQ is below average, no way you'll ever be a rocket scientist.

I'm not saying person effort has nothing to do with how a person''s life turns out. A man who spends most of his life in prisons could have a Mensa IQ and have been born with advantages most people never see, but, perhaps, been a psychopath from birth, and thus unlucky and doomed to antisocial behavior.

Personal effort factors big, but that may also be a matter of genetic luck. Perhaps drive and persistence is earmarked from the day a person is born, and those who lack drive and persistence may not have been as lucky.

And, you have to admit, luck plays into whether you get to exercise whatever gifts you were blessed with, by luck, at birth. One unlucky event, say a car accident that kills or debilitates you, and you lose the luck of the draw for life.

After 40 years of marriage, Al and Tipper gore are breaking up. When I see couples who have been together for so many years dissolving their marriages, I have to say, "why?".

You would think if a couple can get through 40 years with all the potentials for arguments and break ups, they could remain together till death. It always seems more a shame when longterm relationships go bust. It's like a movie where the deserving guy you're rooting for loses. In other words, it's a big letdown to see couples who succeeded so well for so many years, suddenly decide they can no longer love each other.

From what I read, though, I can understand one of the reasons they are finished. They both had high powered careers and both traveled a lot. I think Al Gore's work took him away from home so much his wife had to get used to being alone. That can wear on a relationship, and lead to a growing apart that one of the news articles cited as a reason for the break up.

Sad to see such a successful couple parting. I hope they both find happiness in their new paths, though I wish they could have stayed together.

Pity how many people pass through your life, so many goodbyes. People you meet in grade school, high school, college, the military, jobs and in other meetings and partings. Some you might keep in touch with. Others vanish from your life, only memories good, bad or indifferent. A few you know die, wars, accidents, suicides, natural causes. Of course, they all die, but you only know of a handful. The rest die out of your life long before their physical deaths.

Sometimes you wonder what happened to them. Are they happy, sad, dead? So many stories you saw only a chapter or a sentence of. I wonder if these meetings and partings have any significance in the whole of a person's life. Or are they just random, mere encounters devoid of purpose except what you extract from them.

Ah, so many the goodbyes. Sometimes too many. Some you're glad you're rid of. Some you wish you could have kept.

I often think about how might have been friends kill each other in wars. Enemies who under sane circumstances might have shared pleasant conversations, enjoyed a joke or two instead of slaughtering one another.

Of course, if war is forced upon people, doves become hawks and do what they must do to defend their homelands and their freedoms. Kindhearted people on both sides become enmeshed in the killing and in the dying. Pity, though, the battle fields are bloodied with the bodies of doves lost in the turbulence of warring ideologies.

And disappointing our species hasn't evolved further instead of still mired in wars. Maybe some day might have been friends will lay down their weapons and put away the madness of war.