There are numerous ways in which God can make us lonely and lead us back to ourselves. This is the way He dealt with me at the time. It was like a ba… - Hermann Hesse

In all beginnings dwells a magic force
For guarding us and helping us to live.
Serenely let us move to distant places
And let no sentiments of home detain us.
The Cosmic Spirit seeks not to restrain us
But lifts us stage by stage to wider spaces.

I have always believed, and I still believe, that whatever good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value.

An enlightened man had but one duty — to seek the way to himself, to reach inner certainty, to grope his way forward, no matter where it led. The realization shook me profoundly, it was the fruit of this experience. I had often speculated with images of the future, dreamed of roles that I might be assigned, perhaps as poet or prophet or painter, or something similar. All that was futile. I did not exist to write poems, to preach or to paint, neither I nor anyone else. All of that was incidental. Each man had only one genuine vocation — to find the way to himself. He might end up as poet or madman, as prophet or criminal — that was not his affair, ultimately it was of no concern. His task was to discover his own destiny — not an arbitrary one — and live it out wholly and resolutely within himself. Everything else was only a would-be existence, an attempt at evasion, a
flight back to the ideals of the masses, conformity and fear of one's own inwardness.