both at the same time...............

     F. Scott Fitzgerald, a contemporary of William Jennings Bryan, described this paradox.  "The test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.  One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them better."  It seems to me that the lesson in both Bryan's and Fitzgerald's comments is to simultaneously choose life while serenely knowing that the mysterious future pull is doing exactly what it is supposed to be doing as our bodies age and die.  Thus we are in charge and we are not in charge, both at the same time, and it is all right for these two opposites to coexist.

-Wayne Dyer,  from Wisdom of the Ages