On not wasting your life

". . . four decades have shown me that the achievement trajectory doesn't go infinitely up, that time is limited, that choices are essential and that life need not be a train that comes at you, but rather a walk through a garden where you choose the route.
. . . I was determined not to waste as much of the second half of my life listening to the white noise of self-deprecating internal chatter, and while I was at it, to gravitate toward the people in my life who love me as I am.
I began to cultivate something that feels a lot like faith: in myself, in my art, and in the physical world that allows for art's creation, in the people I love, and even in something larger that I never know whether to call the Universe or God."

Quoted from Pam Houston's essay on "Turning Forty" printed in the Dec. 2003/Jan. 2004 issue of More magazine, published by Meredith Corporation, Des Moines, IA 50309.