This is a moment in life towering with optimism from which the long view ahead seems indelibly good and the path forward open with possibilities.  The promise of that moment, as with youth, is mythic, and blows through our lives like the first warm summer wind, still engaging us as spiritual beings.  Few of us live lives that meet that promise. As we are swallowed into the demands of commercial and corporate culture, the spiritual self is replaced with an unexamined mania to own, and own and own some more.

That is our cultural story.  From spirit to a quest for gold. The optimism, though cartoonish, remains an edifice of our pursuits.