twenty-eight years and a million words
Today by happy chance I met a fellow Canadian who's returned from Japan with a Japanese wife.
It happened in what you might think was an odd location; the board room of a brokerage. But then there was a time when plenty of finance industry types were over there, so maybe it shouldn't have come as such as surprise.
One day you will take a fork in the road, and you're going to have to make a decision about which direction you want to go. If you go one way, you can be somebody. You will have to make compromises and you will have to turn your back on your friends. But you will be a member of the club and you will get promoted and get good assignments. Or you can go the other way and you can do something [...] for yourself. If you decide to do something, you may not get promoted and get good assignments and you certainly will not be a favorite of your superiors. But you won't have to compromise yourself. To be somebody or to do something. In life there is often a roll call. That's when you have to make a decision. To be or to do.
—John Boyd, US Air Force