Life is our resume. It is our story to tell, and the choices we make write the chapters. Can we live in a way where we look forward to looking back?

We can never know what we want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come. [...] And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself? That is why life is always like a sketch. No, 'sketch' is not quite the word, because a sketch is an outline of something, the groundwork for a picture, whereas the sketch that is our life is a sketch for nothing, an outline with no picture.

We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to com. ... There is no means in testing which decision is better, because there is no basis for comparison. We live everything as it comes, without warning, like an actor going on cold. And what can life be worth if the firs rehearsal for life is life itself? That is why life is always like a sketch. No, 'sketch' is not quiet the word, because a sketch is an outline of something, the ground work for a picture, whereas the sketch that is our life is a sketch for nothing, an outline with no picture.

Life is what you make it. Always has been. Always will be.

Life is what you make it. Always has been, always will be.

Reflected here is life as I lived it, my thoughts and feelings as I remember them. Here, too, are my personal exchanges with others. IN reconstructing them, I have relied on my knowledge of opinions held, and my recollection of articulated events.
Memory seems a fragile spirit. It may be a river of reality that fathers dreams and desires and change in its flow. Nevertheless, I have tried to be faithful to both fact and feeling.

What happened is already happened and whatever happened in it, good and bad, is my life, the one that God wrote for me. Life is beautiful despite being imperfect. I believe that if it had to be this way, there is nothing that I think needs to be changed... I am happy the way I am. With my mistakes and successes, I can try to become a better human being.

My life’s work has been accomplished. I did all that I could.

Write it down. Even if it's a few sentences. Because you won't remember. You think you will never forget, but you will. Write down your life story or a poem. Sometimes shorter is better. Make a list of what all you have loved in this unfair and beautiful world. (p 82)

what I didn’t know, or rather had absolutely no conception of, was that every step I took was defining me, every person I encountered leaving their mark on me, and that the life I was living at that particular time, boundlessly arbitrary as it seemed, was in fact my life. That one day I would look back on my life, and this would be what I looked back on. What then had been insignificant, as weightless as air, a series of events dissolving in exactly the same way as the darkness dissolved in the mornings, would twenty years on seem laden with destiny and fate.

If your life is worth thinking about,it is worth writing about.

What was our life like? I almost don't remember now. Though I remember it, the space of time it occupied. And I remember it fondly.

My life — I had lived in its heights and its depths, in bitter sorrow and ecstatic joy, in black despair and fervent hope. I had drunk the cup to the last drop. I had lived my life. Would I had the gift to paint the life I had lived! (chapter 56)

Consider all that you've gone through, all that you've survived. And that the story of your life is done, your assignment complete. How many good things have you seen? How much pain and pleasure have you resisted? How many honors have you declined? How many unkind people have you been kind to? (Hays translation)