Life - Accept no other definition

My ruminations today have centered around the purpose of life. What makes each of us get up each day and do the things we do? How many folks get to age 50, age 60, age 70, and feel like they've accomplished what they set out to in life? How many feel like they have a plan or purpose that will carry them into old age? How many folks will feel fulfilled when they reach the end of their lives? Is there some core activity that we can do which will give us the greatest fulfillment - changing the lives of millions of people? Changing the life of one other person? Simply changing our own?

I drive down the street to pickup Chinese for dinner and I think about all the folks who are indoors for the evening - sheltered in from the Northeast cold (it's 25F outside!) There are families with kids, there are older couples whose kids have grown up and moved out, there's the widower down the street whose wife died about four years ago. There's the family that lost a son and a son-in-law on 9/11. Are they pondering their future? Are they content with today?

I suppose the questions come from within, trying to understand what drives me to get up day-to-day, trying to understand if there's a reason to "design a life" or let life unfold by itself. I wonder how many folks have the luxury to ponder the question all day? How many people sense each day that they've got more than they could have asked for, that they're lives are rich beyond what they could have hoped for?

Later I finish dinner and open a fortune cookie which reads "TEAMS - Together Everyone Achieves More Success". I think - wow, I was expecting something more meaningful. Something more in tune with my thoughts today.

Then I open the second fortune cookie which reads "Accept no other definition of your life, accept only your own." Ah, that's more like it!