A Meaningful Life

From a newspaper article entitled Accumulation of Ordinary Gestures, written to graduates:

"A meaningful life is not usually built on grand gestures but, rather, on habitual accumulation of ordinary ones. ...The little choices you make..now..will determine what you do when it really matters. ..You will fail at something, even if you succeed by the standards of the world. That failure may save you; success may destroy you...The only thing that matters is a life of self-sacrificing virtue, whether a prince's or a pauper's. People wonder how to get what they want, but rarely think about what they should want. Don't be true to thine own self; be true to the truth..." (emphasis mine) Rod Dreher-Dallas Morning News, 2009

"The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life... " George Eliot-"Middlemarch"