LIFE'S OPTIONS ARE FRUIT TREES Life's options branch out like a tree. As above so below, as all limbs end. Put another way, the expression of one thing is also the exclusion of another thing. "Expressio unias est exclusio alterius," if stated in Latin. In 1973, the year that I graduated from Howard undergrad, I had an opportunity to work for a book publisher in New York, and to work for a prominent men's magazine in Chicago. But, I turned down both, and remained in Washington, D.C. Later that summer, still in D.C., while I was summer-interning at the then-new National Cable Television Association , I had an opportunity to enter Harvard Law School on an inside connection . But, I did not follow up on it, since I did not want Harvard Law School to have any claim upon me. So I enrolled in the Howard Law School, staying in D.C. In Kansas City, Missouri, in 2000s, I was offered an inside opportunity to become a state court judge, but I bypassed that unsolicited offer, preferring to remain in the private practice of law, rather than to sit on a bench, any bench, in judgment . I am where I am, not only because of what I have done, but for what I have chosen not to do, or pursue. The same is probably true for you. We all have occupational, personal, options before us: to do or not; to have or not; to be or not, in life. If we are still here to talk about it, all has unquestionably gone very well. Thus, the branches that we chose were correct for us. Let us applaud ourselves for all moving forward on our faith; for reaping fruits thereof! No need to lament what might have been if "woulda, coulda, shoulda!"