Each life is a work of art, but not a static one. It is a multi-dimensional painting or a fluid sculpture; or perhaps a story in a book whose twists and turns of plot may change at any moment, being rewritten even as the reader turns the page. No one brush stroke controls the placement of another brush stroke. No sentence mandates another sentence on the page. Nonetheless, once a mark has been made on the page, it does suggest a certain placement and direction for the next, and the next after that, and so on. The masterpiece is complete from the moment of birth, yet ever changing and evolving. Past events are brush strokes on the canvas, pages in the book – they are part of the work. The past is the context through which we interpret the present. It cannot be otherwise, for the synapses of our minds are shaped by those events.

–Sandra B