carpe diem "It has seemed to me that each year one should pause to take stock of himself, to ask where am I going? What am I becoming? What do I wish to do and become? Most people whom I encounter were without purpose, people who had given themselves no goal. The first goal need not be the final one, for a sailing ship sails first by one wind, then another. The point is that it is always going somewhere, proceeding toward a final destination ... Up to a point, a man's life is shaped by environment, heredity, and movement and changes in the world about him; then it comes a time when it lies within his grasp to shape the clay of his life into the sort of thing he wishes to be. Only the weak blame parents, their race, their times, lack of good fortune, or the quirks of fate. Everyone has it within his power to say this I am today, that I shall be tomorrow."