Choice, not chance, determines your destiny. It's up to you to decide what you are worth, how you matter, and how you make meaning in the world. No one else has your gifts--your set of talents, ideas, interests. You are an original. A masterpiece.
Interpretation
Our choices shape our future, highlighting our unique talents and worth.
This quote emphasizes the power of personal choice over random events in shaping one's life. It reminds us that our individual decisions define our self-worth and the unique contributions we bring to the world, encouraging us to recognize and celebrate our originality and inherent value.
In practice
During a motivational speech about personal development.
When you have cancer, it's like you enter a new time zone: the Cancer Zone. Everything in the Tropic of Cancer revolves around your health or your sickness. I didn't want my whole life to revolve around cancer. Life came first; cancer came second.
Greet every morning with open arms and say thanks every night with a full heart. Each day is a precious gift to be savored and used, not left unopened and hoarded for a future that may never come.
The only gift my dad ever bought me is still in my jewelry box. It died at 10 minutes to 11 decades ago, but the gold Caravelle watch keeps my dad alive. A watch isn't about keeping time. It's about stopping it.
Before I started chemotherapy treatments, I wrote down the best advice from doctors, family, friends, books, and survivors and created an 'Owner's Manual' to help me take care of myself. It would remind me that cancer is doable.
Some people hate funerals. I find them comforting. They hit the pause button on life and remind us that it has an end. Every eulogy reminds me to deepen my dash, that place on the tombstone between our birth and our death.
Cancer is messy and scary. You throw everything at it, but don't forget to throw love at it. It turns out that might be the best weapon of all.
There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why... I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?
Hope - Hope in the face of difficulty. Hope in the face of uncertainty. The audacity of hope!
My experience from 20 years of Africa is that the seemingly impossible is possible.
I am all for anything that is going to better equip a person who is physically challenged in any way, to have an opportunity to be able to do what they are able to do.
I have no credentials. I have no money. I literally come from a poor place. I was a servant. I dropped out of college. The next thing you know I'm writing for the 'New Yorker,' I have this sort of life, and it must seem annoying to people.
I'm honored to have been chosen as a fellow of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. I am hugely appreciative for the support I have had throughout my life, and I look forward to using the grant to help institutions that have fed my soul and to support new work that inspires me.
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