twenty-seven years and one million words
This morning I continued unpacking. Charlie called and asked if I wanted to join Andrea, Kerry and him in going to some breakfast place out in the retail suburb, and then go to a flick.
The breakfast was competent, the movie - Big Fish - was fair, and the wan daylight was cold and blue. It's been a rough couple of weeks, and things seem a bit grey.
Meaning is not something you stumble across, like the answer to a riddle or the prize in a treasure hunt. Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you, out of your own talent and understanding, out of the things you believe in, out of the things and people you love, out of the values for which you are willing to sacrifice something. The ingredients are there. You are the only one who can put them together into that unique pattern that will be your life. Let it be a life that has dignity and meaning for you. If it does, then the particular balance of success or failure is of less account.
—John Gardner