What makes you grow? While rolling many ideas around in my head to write this piece. I narrowed my focus a bit and chose: family and sense of purpose.

    My family keeps me excited to be alive-beginning the day with a morning kiss from the man I love. He is there to listen and guide, to laugh and sigh, to explore and relax, and to make each day meaningful. Together we have three delightful children. Even though they have caused various gray hairs over the years, they have also provided love and laughter.

    Friends fall into the family category (范畴) as well. Although they are not cut of the same cloth, they are part of the same quilt. True friends are often as giving .and maybe even more giving as family. Even though our friends enter our life later than our family, strong relation exists. In fact, sometimes friends know us better than family.

    The second drive is a sense of purpose. While impossible to describe, it is very easy to picture as we think of even thing of value that touches us. A purpose may be a happy family, home life, and so on. Actually in most cases it is a combination of all these as they affect our lives deeply.

    Purpose is new, fresh, exciting and always changing. You're taking up the same job each day except sometimes challenged. I always wanted to be a teacher, for example, and I chose junior high French. However, over the years my tasks changed so that I had various opportunities to teach K-12 and beyond in a wide range of subjects, levels and school districts. I remained in the same profession for more than 40 years but never in the same setting.