"Ballast is what I want, I totter with every breeze." John Adams

In a few weeks I'll be turning twenty six, an age, as my wife so often points out, that will result in my being old (though not as old, as I'm quick to point out, as the twenty seven she'll be turning in a few months...)

Twenty six, while generally glossed over by the the world at large as a brief stopping point between twenty one (legal drinking!) and thirty (adult life begins!) holds special significance to me. Twenty six happens to be age at which Milton wrote the sonnet from which I took the title for my blog (actually many scholars think he wrote it in his forties and my Milton professor was most likely cherry picking his dates to apply the poem to a bunch of college students, but that is neither here nor there).

While twenty six will most likely, statistically speaking, not prove to be the half-way point for my life as it was for so many in Milton's time it does provide for some introspection. I find myself grappling with many of the same issues Milton addressed centuries ago: is that "one talent which is death to hide" being developed or is it "lodged with me useless", have my choices to this point irrevocably closed doors better left open, why am I so often left feeling "light denied"?

Even though easy answers to such questions are not to be had I take solace in Milton's own response. "God doth not need either man's work or his own gifts: Who best bear his mild yoke, they serve him best."