The purpose that you wish to find in life, like a cure you seek, is not going to fall from the sky. ...I believe purpose is something for which one is responsible; it's not just divinely assigned.
Interpretation
Finding purpose in life requires personal responsibility and active pursuit, rather than waiting for it to come to you.
Michael J. Fox's quote emphasizes the idea that individuals must take initiative in discovering their own purpose in life. Rather than passively waiting for a divine revelation or external circumstance to define one's purpose, it is a personal responsibility that requires self-reflection, action, and dedication. This suggests that meaning and direction in life are shaped by our choices and efforts, reinforcing the notion that we are active participants in determining our own paths.
In practice
In a motivational speech about personal growth, you could cite this quote to encourage taking charge of one's own life.
I find as long as I acknowledge the truth of something, then that's it. I know what it is and then I can operate. But if I overestimate the downside of something or the challenge of something and I get too obsessed about the difficulty of it, then I don't leave enough room to be open to the upside, the possibility.
My whole life, meeting people is like a blind date, because I feel like they've already seen the video on me.
There are no moments you have frozen in amber. It's moving, it's changing, so appreciate what's good about right now and be ready for what's next.
There's always failure. And there's always disappointment. And there's always loss. But the secret is learning from the loss, and realizing that none of those holes are vacuums.
Certainly people have a lot tougher situations than I've had to deal with. But I will say we are all dying from the moment we are born. This is not just rehearsal.
I'm a dad, I'm a husband, I'm an activist, I'm a writer and I'm just a student of the world.
It is the mind that makes the man, and our vigour is in our immortal soul.
I’m beginning to know myself. I don’t exist. I’m the space between what I’d like to be and what others made of me. Just let me be at ease and all by myself in my room.
and for a moment he held out his hands as if to steady himself or as if to bless the ground there or perhaps as if to slow the world that was rushing away and seemed to care nothing for the old or the young or rich or poor or dark or pale or he or she. Nothing for their struggles, nothing for their names. Nothing for the living or the dead.
We must reserve a back shop all our own entirely free, in which to establish our real liberty and our principal retreat and solitude.
God is in the slums, in the cardboard boxes where the poor play house. God is in the silence of a mother who has infected her child with a virus that will end both their lives. God is in the cries heard under the rubble of war. God is in the debris of wasted opportunity and lives, and God is with us if we are with them.
The individual is the true reality of life. A cosmos in himself, he does not exist for the State, nor for that abstraction called "society," or the "nation," which is only a collection of individuals.
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