Trying to Make a Difference

Abstract

An invitation to write of the facts of one’s life and the forces that have driven and shaped them presents for me, at 64, a special challenge and opportunity. Any attempt to provide coherence to events and experiences that seemed, while they were being lived, not only to lack unity and clear direction but to feel at times quite random or chaotic must to a degree represent a false imposition of order. Yet, I suppose, all learning and teaching must to some extent be like that. For if we are to pass our experience — and, yes, lessons — on to others we must make them tangible and give them form, creating, if we can, a story from which meaning might be derived.

Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that all was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, and make it possible.

— T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, 1935