It has seemed to me that each year one should pause to take stock of himself, to ask: Where am I going? What am I becoming? What do I wish to do and become?
Most people whom I encountered were without purpose, people who had given themselves no goal. The first goal need not be the final one, for a sailing ship sails first by one wind, then another. The point is that it is always going somewhere, proceeding towards a final destination.
....
To me, the goal was to learn, to see, to know, to understand. Never could I glimpse a sail on an outbound ship but my heart would stumble and my throat grow tight.
Up to a point, a man's life is shaped by environment, heredity, and the movements and changes in the world about him; then there comes a time when it lies within his grasp to shape the clay of his life into the sort of thing he wishes to be. Only the weak blame parents, their race, their times, lack of good fortune or the quirks of fate. Everyone has it within his power to say "this I am today, that I shall be tomorrow." The wish, however, must be implemented by deeds.
-- Louis L'Amour, The Walking Drum --
(pp. 372-373)
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