Choice, not chance, determines your destiny. It's up to you to decide what you are worth, how you matter, and how you make meaning in the world. No one else has your gifts--your set of talents, ideas, interests. You are an original. A masterpiece.
Interpretation
Our choices shape our future, highlighting our unique talents and worth.
This quote emphasizes the power of personal choice over random events in shaping one's life. It reminds us that our individual decisions define our self-worth and the unique contributions we bring to the world, encouraging us to recognize and celebrate our originality and inherent value.
In practice
During a motivational speech about personal development.
When you have cancer, it's like you enter a new time zone: the Cancer Zone. Everything in the Tropic of Cancer revolves around your health or your sickness. I didn't want my whole life to revolve around cancer. Life came first; cancer came second.
Greet every morning with open arms and say thanks every night with a full heart. Each day is a precious gift to be savored and used, not left unopened and hoarded for a future that may never come.
The only gift my dad ever bought me is still in my jewelry box. It died at 10 minutes to 11 decades ago, but the gold Caravelle watch keeps my dad alive. A watch isn't about keeping time. It's about stopping it.
Before I started chemotherapy treatments, I wrote down the best advice from doctors, family, friends, books, and survivors and created an 'Owner's Manual' to help me take care of myself. It would remind me that cancer is doable.
Some people hate funerals. I find them comforting. They hit the pause button on life and remind us that it has an end. Every eulogy reminds me to deepen my dash, that place on the tombstone between our birth and our death.
Cancer is messy and scary. You throw everything at it, but don't forget to throw love at it. It turns out that might be the best weapon of all.
For me, Superman's greatest contribution has never been the superhero part: it's the Clark Kent part - the idea that any of us, in all our ordinariness, can change the world.
The first time I tried on Shang-Chi's superhero suit - Marvel has never had an Asian lead, so that was such a rare and impactful moment, for me as an actor but also for people who look like me. I nearly cried. It was so emotional.
I identified in a very deep way with the individuals I was writing about because the theme that runs through this story is of extraordinary hardship and the will to overcome it.
To have the chance to see your music be elevated and to have almost universally positive response to that music, makes me feel better every day. I feel more confident and inspired, and that's fun.
I have this dream again and again: I find extra rooms in the place where I live. You could say it's a very New York dream, but I think it's about writing - the feeling that there is something behind a wall or a door.
I look forward to an America which will not be afraid of grace and beauty.
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