Vision of the Future

It is time to let the waters of the past flow away to distant shores. Though never to be forgotten, those friends long gone must not haunt my thoughts all the day and night. They will be there, I take comfort in knowing, ready to smile whenever my mind's eye seeks that comforting sight, .. ready to remind me of my folly when I cannot see that which is right before me, and ready, ever ready, to make me smile, to warm my heart.

..

'Live your life in segments,' a wise elf once told me. ...

...

It was what it is to be alive, for though this exercise is most poignant and necessary in those races living long, even the short-lived humans divide their lives into segments, though they rarely recognise the transient truth as they move through one or another stage of their existence. Every person I have known tricks himself into thinking that this current way of things will continue on, year after year. It is so easy to speak of expectations, of what will be in a decade, perhaps, and to be convinced that the important aspects of one's life will remain as they are, or will improve as desired.

'This will be my life in a year!'
'This will be my life in five years!'
'This will be my life in ten years!'

We all tell ourselves these hopes and dreams and expectations, and with conviction, for the goal is needed to faciliate the journey. But in the end of that span, be it one or five or ten or fifty years hence, it is the journey and not the goal, achieved or lost, that defines who we are. The journey is the story of our life, not the achievement or failure at its end, and so the more important declaration by far, I have come to know is, 'This is my life now.'

- Drizzt Do'Urden, Gauntlgrym