Who wouldn't be proud of a son who has outgrown his parents, his environment, and even himself? This page is a collection of fragments of e-mails that my son, Dante, and I exchange in our daily effort to discover the secret of life.

Focus on Dante's thoughts -- they are words of wisdom that spew from the heart and mind of a young man as he molts and evolves into the being he was meant to be.

6-04-05: Read article: Reflections on the Circle of Life.

7-26-03: Read article: Mother and Son

4-18-01: I expressed to Dante my sadness over the almost simultaneous deaths of several good friends: "So this is how it is to be middle-aged -- news about friends crossing over comes more frequently. [sigh]"

4-19-01: Dante replied: "... don't worry about news that people are passing away. You're still here to hear about them, aren't you?

"We keep on meeting new people for the rest of our lives while occasionally losing contact with a few old friends. Sometimes it takes a day, sometimes a week, sometimes a decade before you even hear about them again. In the meantime, you make more of your life happen. Now's the same thing. Your life goes on, and you make more friends. The ones who go out of touch, well, they're out there somewhere, making more of their lives happen -- be those lives here, or on another level of existence.

"No one ever dies. And a rare few, like myself, are forever young."

4-20-01: I said, "You're so right, no?! I thought about it this way but never tried putting it down in words. We can just consider the dear departed as being somewhere in another corner of the planet, like most of all our other friends we're not in touch with. But the contra-argument about this is something I picked up from a movie (can't remember the title now)...

"Guy and girl who used to be very good friends part ways and after many years meet again very briefly in an undercover assignment. After the assignment is over, they need to part ways again and she says to him, 'Stay alive, okay?!' And he says, 'Well, alive or dead, it wouldn't matter to you cuz we may never see each other again anyway.' And she answers back, 'It's different when I know that sometime somewhere I could bump into you again.'

"Sometimes we can just think of people as being somewhere else in this existence. But knowing that there's a remote chance we will see them again in their physical forms, is some sort of consolation. But yes, the main consolation is we're still here."

4-21-01: And Dante comes back with wisdom: "Oh, and about passing away and friends being elsewhere in the world -- sure, it's a pleasant, romantic thought that you might still run into the people you care about. If you think about it pragmatically, though, the chances of your running into a truly long-lost friend are about the same as passing on yourself. With the latter, you may meet those who have gone ahead, maybe not.

"My point, though, is that what is truly real to us depends entirely on how we perceive things. This isn't some zen cop-out; it's a given fact. If your friends aren't physically around, what difference does it make if they're alive or dead? Only your thoughts give 'reality' to your concerns. Thinking about potentially meeting a lost friend again is the same thing as hoping you win the lottery, or worrying that you might get hit by a truck as you cross the street. Do the math, and you'll see that all you need to do is apply the same principle for a drifting mind: hakuna matata. Don't waste time overburdening yourself with your own personal hell. Instead do what you can with your life. Why waste time dreading, when you can be dreaming? And why deteriorate, when you can be doing?

"I'm just saying that, by applicative comparison to our daily lives, death is the longest vacation. And if everyone takes it at some point or other, it doesn't matter that it never ends. Death is the winning lottery ticket, the speeding truck, the multi-trillion-dollar contract, the violent earthquake, the worldwide renown for your legendary bestseller. It is every exceptional event, and like all exceptional events, it is as good or as bad as you think it is. Maybe you'll even think it's just a fact of life, and that it happens. While a particular exceptional event hasn't happened to you, don't resent the fact that it happens to other people. And whatever happens to other people isn't a deprivation of what 'good' should come to you, nor a curse guaranteeing what 'bad' will -- it's a reassurance that you'll have your own exceptions, just like everyone else.

"Death is magic. Life is magic. Everything in between is magic. And magic is always clear and plainspoken until the one who encounters it paints it a personal shade of feeling.

"Life is a solitary journey. Make yourself happy. Don't dread and deteriorate; instead dream and do. Hakuna matata. Think about it.

"Remember the greatest wisdom: the secret of life is . . . .

"Yes, that really is the secret of life. That it is the ellipsis, the unwritten, the potential for anything. Just as it is the secret of death, and the secret for everything in between."