I almost never think of my calendar years. I’m forever hiking across the same plateau with no end in sight. – Saul Bellow, Ravelstein

Saul Bellow was a Canadian-American writer. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1976. Ravelstein is the first book of his we could be bothered to read.

It’s common, of course, for us to chronicle the passing of the years. Most of us celebrate our birthdays. From youth to adulthood to middle age to our final years, the birthdays, as well as the waypoints and milestones along the way, all provide ways to mark the passing of our lives.

Is it necessary, though?

Must we define ourselves by our age? After all, this is merely a marking of how much time we’ve passed on this planet. In no way does it measure what we’ve accomplished or whether or not we’ve passed a useful life.

No, we must define ourselves by what we’ve accomplished, about how we’ve made out time and talents serve us.

I’m forever hiking across the same plateau…

We must be true to our nature. All of us have a path we were meant to follow, a plateau we were meant to cross…The happiest lives are spent by those who are relentless in crossing their plateau, who work hard to construct the lives they were meant to live.

And it’s different for everybody. You’re reading this because something inside compelled me to write it. To not yield to that compulsion would have been foolish, a missed opportunity to do something I was meant to do. Others have no interest in writing, just like I have no interest in building a chair or running a cattle ranch. It’s how the world is built. Nature gave us all varying interests and skills and this world runs better when we are all utilizing them.

What is nature compelling you to do today? What talents are your instincts telling you to utilize? Will you trust these instincts to make your time serve you, or will you ignore them and while away an aimless day?

Every day the choice is ours. When we choose to hike across our plateaus, the numbers that chronicle our age don’t matter.

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If we did the things we were capable of, we would astound ourselves. – Thomas Edison

Thomas Edison (1847-1931) was one of the most influential men who ever lived. His contributions to our Human Experience were as enormous as they were profound. A complete detailing of his accomplishments – which include 2,332 patents, 1,093 of those in the United States – is probably unnecessary and is beyond the scope of this column besides.

We talk a lot here about making the most of the talents you were born with. Edison is a perfect example of this. He is a man who spent his life doing what he was meant to do. Now, Edison’s talent just happened to lead to accomplishments that ensure he lives down the ages. Not all of us will. It’s the way the world is built.

However, his lesson of doing what we were meant to do with our lives is one we can all heed, regardless of where our road takes us. Everyone has talent and can do something well, and there are those that can do some things really well and very few who do them better than anyone else. It’s up to us to get the most out of them, regardless of what they are or in what measure we were issued them.

Edison’s life also offers lessons on work, patience and perseverance. Failure never deterred him. Every one of us will fail far more often than we will succeed, including Edison, but he doggedly pursued his life’s work with diligence and courage until he reached his desired end. Edison shows us that the difference between success and failure is usually hard work.

Now, just because what we are meant to may not bring us fame and fortune, does that mean we don’t it? Of course it doesn’t. The well-lived life comes not from being rich and famous, but living the life you were meant to live, regardless of where it takes you. If you do this, if you follow your heart and trust your instincts, invariably you will end where you always wanted to go.

If Edison’s parents had never met, everything he did would have eventually been done by someone else. But Edison’s the one who did them. He did the things he was capable of, and I’ve always wondered if he astounded himself or whether he thought it was merely all part of the day’s work.

Our lives are blank canvasses where we can either astound ourselves or take a flier and pass a numbingly large amount of aimless days. Every day, the choice is ours.

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Of course you did. Have you forgotten you?
I must have.
I haven’t. You were ambitious.
Perhaps you’re right. I have pretty much forgotten me.   
– Gore Vidal, Empire

Empire is a historical novel from Gore Vidal. It covers the lives of assorted fictional characters and real people from 1898-1907. It is part of his Narratives of Empire series, a sweeping, mostly fictional chronicle of America from the Revolution through the middle of the 20^th century.

Today’s Thought sums up life nicely. We grow up going to bed at night dreaming of doing things. It could be anything – ballplayer, nurse, baker, it doesn’t matter. Some things we might outgrow, but some stay with us throughout our formative years. We head into adulthood with these dreams still with us and we have to decide whether to chase them or whether to take a pass and do other things with our lives.

Decades later we look back at our decision. If we chased our dreams, no doubt we caught some while others – equally without doubt – probably have eluded us. It’s the way the world is built. This planet is filled with billions of people leading billions of random lives and sometimes some things are out of our control.

If we didn’t chase our dreams, we are going to have to answer for that, too. And we will answer to ourselves. We will be left wondering what if.

There can be no greater failure in life. All of us were born with certain talents and ambitions and this world functions best – both individually and collectively – when we are getting the most out of them. When we ignore them, when we live a life we were not meant to live, we find our lives unhappy and unsatisfying.

Have you forgotten you?

It’s easy to forget ourselves. Every day there are a thousand different things there to distract us from what we were meant to do: family and work obligations, Mother Nature telling us to go and reproduce, the lawn needs mowing. We must overcome these obstacles and we must do it every day because that’s how often they’re there.

You were ambitious.

Ambition sometimes serves us well. Sometimes it doesn’t.

On the one hand, ambition is what gets things done. Christopher Columbus didn’t discover the New World because he stayed in port.

On the other hand, ambition can be limiting because sometimes what we want is not the most we are capable of. We run into this anytime we do something in response to an outside influence because ambition must come from inside. It must not be driven by external forces. It must be driven by the instincts that will tell us what we are supposed to be doing with our lives.

We can never forget us. We must always be mindful of what we were meant to be.

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