Being content is perhaps no less easy than playing the violin well: and requires no less practice.

It is the most ambitious and driven among us who are the most sorely in need of having our reckless hopes dampened through immersive dousings in the darkness which religions have explored. This is a particular priority for secular Americans, perhaps the most anxious and disappointed people on earth, for their nation infuses them with the most extreme hopes about what they may be able to achieve in their working lives and relationships.

There is always the option of being emotionally lazy, that is, of quoting.

Must being in love always mean being in pain?

Most victories are, in the best way, acts of revenge.

What I want to argue for is not that we should give up on our ideas of success, but that we should make sure that they are our own. We should focus in on our ideas and make sure that we own them, that we're truly the authors of our own ambitions. Because it's bad enough not getting what you want, but it's even worse to have an idea of what it is you want and find out at the end of the journey that it isn't, in fact, what you wanted all along.

The pleasure we derive from journeys is perhaps dependent more on the mindset with which we travel than on the destination we travel to.