In the Forward to his new book, author Douglas Hughes begins:

"As far back as I can remember, I wanted to be older and wiser. When I was 10, I wanted to be 20. When I turned 20, I thought life would be better at 30. As I approached my third decade, I dreamed of having the wisdom of a 50 year-old. And when I finally reached the half centennial mark, I began to wonder how much more fulfilled I might feel with 80 years of living behind me.

 

But each succeeding milestone has also been a reminder that as we grow older (and hopefully wiser), we increasingly lose a little more youthful innocence and perspective about the world around us. And with the loss of that innocence, there is also the realization that we cannot go back again.

What we once accepted as truth can sometimes look like ignorance when seen in the context of the world we share today. At such times we are tempted to relegate these past thoughts and beliefs to a box we put on a shelf in the dusty corners of our memory. It is simply labeled … “youth”.

Occasionally we open that box and look through its contents with a messy combination of embarrassment and humility and fondness for what often seems to have been a simpler time -  softer and less demanding that the world today.

And yet, in a curious case of alchemy, the magic of time can transform the truth of youth into the sage of age.

There comes a day when we reach the inevitable realization that there are fewer nights ahead of us than behind us. It is then that we search for something to give us a sense of immortality.

Eventually, I could no longer put off the inner drive to create something that would remain when I was gone.

I knew it was time to write.

This book takes us on a fascinating journey. Part memoir and part philosophical inquiry into life's most challenging questions - the same ones that sooner or later seem to surface for all of us to look at - it explores these questions by examining the kinds of decisions we each make everyday in the course of ordinary living.