We are who we are in large part because of where we are and when we are. But lives of courage and consequence remap the locus of spirit and possibili… - Maria Popova

This is the paradox of transformative experience: Because our imagination is bounded by our existing templates of how the world as we know it works, we fail to anticipate the greatest transformations — the events and encounters so unmoored from the familiar that they transfigure our map of reality and propel us into a wholly novel mode of being.

For only as truth is substituted for the shadows of doubt and fear and distrust that now impel man to turn against himself — only as truth is discovered and expressed — can we be truly free.

Seeds are planted and come abloom generations, centuries, civilizations later, migrating across coteries and countries and continents. Meanwhile, people live and people die — in peace as war rages on, in poverty and disrepute as latent fame awaits, with much that never meets its more, in shipwrecked love.