I woke up this Sunday morning to biblically perfect weather, precursor to a heavenly ride on Flaming Lips, my always loyal motorcycle. When I roll out of bed on a morning like this, life feels effortless and I purposely choose to go no deeper than its shining moment.

Today, I always take a break from my obsessive, compulsive routine of a Zen sit, followed by my totally repetitive yoga practice, topped off by thirty minutes on the stationary bike, headphones hugging my ears, filling my entire body with my perfectly, crafted musical serenade. Instead, I go directly to the routine of making a cup of freshly brewed, black coffee. Cup in hand, it’s computer time, checking a handful of emails and then on to the tragic predictably of news insanity.

One of the few emails was from an old friend, Alex. We have an incredibly colorful history that came to life around twenty years ago. We were in the tourism business and traveled throughout Central America together, working for a variety of clients interested in creating nature lodges. This morning, he wrote three very simple words, How Are You?

As if by some cosmic contrivance, I had been thinking a bit more than usual about how I was doing. For quite a few years now, my cerebral companion, filling in the inevitable mental blanks between all sorts of unrelated thoughts, has been the meaning of life. No, I don’t stop dead in my tracks, tediously attempting to crochet a complicated, internal response. It has a gentle feel about it and it is something that has quietly grown in prominence as I have gotten older.

As a kid, my response to Alex’s question was always one word, “Fine.” Back then, it was likely a combination of not knowing and/or not wanting to talk about it. When I became a weekend Dad, far too early in the lives of my boys, I got the one word retort from them when we regularly spoke on the phone.

I think the idea of the meaning of my life and living the rest of it are married, one teasing the other to consciousness, while they keep trading places for attention. For me, the threshold was breached in my early forties. I swear I started thinking about how I was living my life and the idea that I had occasionally bumped my head on its ceiling. It scared the hell out of me, so much so, I was willing to walk the high wire without a net. I left for the high desert magic of New Mexico with a plan of sorts to raise the rafters, giving myself some headroom.

Somewhere along the way, I met the Buddha and we became fast friends. I loved what he had to say about the endless riddles of life. I gradually started to accept the immutable truth that life was about striving and never arriving. As I slowly began to incorporate this headache inducing idea, answering Alex’s too simple, often asked query, had long ago begun to feel like my eternal dilemma, the one I am destined to embrace the rest of my life.

So, here I am on an exquisitely perfect Sunday morning, with a smile on my face and a heart tethered to feathers and there is that question once again. What I can say for certain is that answers to this whit of words don’t seem to come with age, at least not for me.

According to Einstein, “the only source of knowledge is experience.” At nearly seventy-five, this should make me borderline genius. However, it seems like every answer births another question. Man, I have accumulated a mountain of experience and as I continue the climb. I have let go of the idea of clarity, being simply thrilled with the view.

Whenever I’m alone, which is often, my companion is always music. This morning, I was carrying my friend’s question around the room. I reached for my worn out, black leather vest and the tight cap that keeps my long, white hair from looking like Einstein’s in a two-wheeled, whirling wind. I walked over to the shelf, where my shades awaited and suddenly, Richard Thompson began singing his,1952 Vincent Black Lightning, the perfect motorcycle elegy, one of those songs that stops me thoughtless dead in my tracks. In that moment, I knew exactly how I was.

Fine.