Meaning

Over the weekend, I was cleaning out a few drawers and came across this clipping. I wanted to save it.

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 expericens of humankind as it is passed on to you, out of your own talent and understanding, out of the things you belive 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 pattern that will be your life. Let it be a life that has dignity and meaning for you. If it does, then the particular blanace of success of faiure is of less account. // John Gardner

When I wonder what I'm doing and where I am going (which is almost constantly), I need to remember that I have the power to choose my direction and put meaning into my life and what I am doing. No one is going to do that for me.