Cinnamon and I were on our evening walk tonight as we passed the house where Pete lived.

The new owners were busy nailing some drywall up on the wall in the back bedroom. You could see that they are doing a lot of renovation to their new home.

When Pete lived there, he used to come out and visit with us as we walked the dogs by his house. He was a funny guy, and smart, and he liked the dogs.

He and his wife Bea were our role models for what we wanted to be when we are a little older.

Bea used to drive the two of them around on various errands and adventures. They would speed by us in their car, waving wildly and smiling ear-to-ear. Sometimes they would stop to talk, but most of the time, they were getting on with living, and they had fun places to be. They were always filled with spirited energy.

Bea died last summer, and Pete could no longer live there by himself, so he moved away. Bea’s death shocked me, in the way that deaths do, when someone who has lived so fully alive dies. Some part of me always expects people who live so robustly to go on forever.

I was sad tonight, as I remembered how much I loved seeing Bea and Pete, and how much I miss them.

It made me remember how I want to be as I get a little older. And that made me remember how I want to be now, so that I can always feel like I have lived my life fully, like Bea and Pete showed me.

How can you live more alive?

As we walked the neighborhood this morning, almost every mailbox had a reusable grocery bag, filled with food, hanging from the mailbox.

The Boy Scouts have a community service project here on the first Saturday in March. They collect dry goods for our local food pantry.

At Rich’s house, there were six bags, filled with food, sitting in the middle of the driveway.

I wasn’t surprised to see those six bags sitting there, but I was inspired.

Rich is a generous and grateful guy. He takes every opportunity, it seems, to give back. He inspires me with his good and generous nature. It seems like he is always going the extra mile, and he is very quiet about it. He just does it.

At Christmas time, at Rich’s house, there is a wrapped gift, sitting on the top of his garbage bin on garbage collection day, for the guy who picks up our garbage.

On New Year’s Day, he and his daughter go door-to-door, taking goodies to all the neighbors.

It makes me smile to see the six bags in the driveway and the Christmas gift on the garbage can.

And these are just the things that I have seen him do. I don’t even live in his little neighborhood, so I’m sure there is a lot that I have missed seeing.

Thank you, Rich, for making our world a better place.

How does generosity touch your life?

I’m walking Harper. It is a mild day for mid-winter, 32 degrees F. There’s a slight breeze coming off the snow fields, so it feels a bit cooler.

We’re walking along a path that was made by a snowmobile a few days ago.

There are a lot of things that I don’t love about snowmobiles. One of them is that they are really noisy. Their sound cuts through an otherwise tranquil, deep winter night.

However, given that I am such an equipment hound, it would be incongruent of me to despise snowmobiles altogether.

Snowmobiles make paths through the farm fields. They compact the snow so much that it makes it very easy to walk on the path that they cut.

This opens up a whole new territory for me in the winter. I have to love that.

The irony of me wanting to walk on someone else’s path is not lost on me.

All of my life, I have eschewed others’ paths through life, in favor of cutting my own.

I have a bit of a rebel nature, and I like the independence and creativity of finding my own way.

Then I made an obvious discovery. You really can’t follow someone else’s path. You only have your path.

Or maybe even more accurately, “Travelers, there is no path, paths are made by walking.” – Antonio Machado

How do you find your path?