There's a line in Richard Bach's book Illusions which goes something like, "If you're wondering whether your mission in life is finished, if you're alive, it isn't".

I'm still alive, but I do have a feeling my mission in this life is finished. Actually, I'll prefer to say that I'm at my journey's end, and have been for a while. If life is a path, I'm literally at the end of it, there's no where to go for me from here; from this cruddy little apartment in Taipei.

The physical path has ended, and only the temporal path has been lingering until I decide to have a personal breakthrough regarding existence and reality.

There's nothing I want to do, nowhere I want to go. I'm not going anywhere, not on my own accord. I don't feel bad about it, I feel free, only trapped by my own mind, limitations and neurotic. And I do consider myself very, very fortunate. But I can't even conceive of taking the very first steps to move again, whether to another apartment, to Kaohsiung, or back to the U.S.

If I wanted to, I could continue with a mission. I could become a participant in my young nephews' and nieces' lives, but there's nothing compelling me towards that mission. They'll be fine without me, I shouldn't wonder, and with me there's no establishing they will be better off for it.

My path is just my own path. I decide when the mission is done.