A man must establish his principles. Should he not, under fire, he will succumb to the wheels around him—opinion, vanity, lobbying, money—all will force chance and misdeeds into his decision. And he, most of all, must live with his decisions. Best these decisions be rooted in what he knows to be true. For looking back on life, we understand that there are but a few crucial moments that define the rest. While we may have been led to believe it’s the power of the moment. It is not. It is the principles of the man who meets the moment. Understanding his only control is in his choices, and he should strive—ever and often—to make his choices feel instinctually automatic. As if his destiny holds the choice in one hand and the man in the other, and leads him like a mother leads a child in an airport, to the inevitable choice that will define him and alter his course toward his destiny.

For the world is ever noisy. Preying on the man who has not decided what he stands on. Swallowing those who don’t do their homework. The internal work. Those who are quoted a price, feeling strongly in their gut that they’ve been overcharged, and pay it anyway without question. Shrinking from the moment the world provided to crawl from discomfort and throw stones at the other from a distance. A man may be cheated once. He is ruled by what he continues to tolerate. All men have principles. Their error is never in the having. It is in the identifying. In the solidifying. In the exercising. A principle undefined is a satellite without power. It will orbit and—much like a broken clock—strike rightly twice. Enough to make the man believe he is assured in who he is and what he tolerates. But this is blindness. For the possession of principles is a gift bestowed. A higher power allowing life experience to be the clay.

This clay must be shaped in the image of the man. And then the firing produces strength, form, substance. The great men go farther still and gild it. Turning this shape into iron. Unbending. Unbreaking. The weak man keeps his clay slick. He shapes and shifts it over and over. Never deciding on what is for him, being too insincere with his own conviction that he wishes to always be in a position to adopt another and form to what the world asks him to form to. Thus he determines a life of irresponsibility, and blame, and occurrences in which he has no influence. And fortune—bad and good, seen and unseen—rules all.