Paul is a retired attorney and lives in Boulder, CO. This is his first book. His second book – “these five breaths” talks about assessing relationships at the end of life.
Hour of the wolf is about his mind howling in the darkness at 2 AM. His parents died young. As he approached his 50s and 60s, he was determined to live life to the fullest. His philosophy, which propelled him to start riding a motorcycle at 54 and go skydiving in the Alps at 64 can be summed up as “live each day to the fullest”. However as the following passages show, there is more to it.
“After I head the wolf’s howls, I decided I would look for mentors to teach me how to live outside of preordained restrictions. Some of my mentors were real people and some came from fiction” One of Paul’s fictional heroes is Larry from W. Somerset Maugham’s “The Razor’s Edge”. The book starts with a quote from the Katha Upanishad “The sharp edge of a razor is difficult to pass over; thus the wise say the path to Salvation is hard.” Paul continues “Larry is an ordinary man. Yet the way he has chosen to live his life may have a lasting effect on those he touches. This comment got me thinking about what it is that makes ordinary people extraordinary is in how they choose to live their lives.”
The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen. “He said that the mountain has no meaning. The mountain is meaning. I realized that this applies to my life, too. There is no separate meaning to my life. Rather how I live my life each day is the meaning of my life. There is no duality to it. If the meaning of a life is in the living of it, then each day is important. If each day is equally valuable, then aging is of no consequence to the importance of the individual day. There is no then and when. There is just now. And in the now I am just me. I have no age.”
“Being true requires the willingness to stand apart. Those who would tear the hero down can’t admit their compromises to themselves, so they demand the hero compromise, too.”
A quote from the movie The Spanish Prisoner “Worry is like paying interest in advance on a debt that never comes due.”
“Finding passion and contentment in life is an inside job. No one else can give these things to you.”
“The decisions that change your life fall in the following five categories: health, family and friends, spirit, learning and fun.”
Friendship as in Cindy’s case should not be hard. As she said “IT WAS SO EASY BEING YOUR FRIEND.”
Paul maintains an inspiring blog “The Ageless Experiment.”