Hunter S. Thompson’s Letter on Finding Your Purpose and Living a Meaningful Life
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Hunter S. Thompson’s Letter on Finding Your Purpose and Living a Meaningful Life
As I see it then, the formula runs something like this: a man must choose a path which will let his ABILITIES function at maximum efficiency toward the gratification of his DESIRES. In doing this, he is fulfilling a need (giving himself identity by functioning in a set pattern toward a set goal), he avoids frustrating his potential (choosing a path
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we must make the goal conform to the individual, rather than make the individual conform to the goal
Farnam Street • Hunter S. Thompson’s Letter on Finding Your Purpose and Living a Meaningful Life
So it would seem foolish, would it not, to adjust our lives to the demands of a goal we see from a different angle every day?
Farnam Street • Hunter S. Thompson’s Letter on Finding Your Purpose and Living a Meaningful Life
You’ve lived a relatively narrow life, a vertical rather than a horizontal existence.
Farnam Street • Hunter S. Thompson’s Letter on Finding Your Purpose and Living a Meaningful Life
all advice can only be a product of the man who gives it
Farnam Street • Hunter S. Thompson’s Letter on Finding Your Purpose and Living a Meaningful Life
To presume to point a man to the right and ultimate goal— to point with a trembling finger in the RIGHT direction is something only a fool would take upon himself.
Farnam Street • Hunter S. Thompson’s Letter on Finding Your Purpose and Living a Meaningful Life
In every man, heredity and environment have combined to produce a creature of certain abilities and desires— including a deeply ingrained need to function in such a way that his life will be MEANINGFUL. A man has to BE something; he has to matter.
Farnam Street • Hunter S. Thompson’s Letter on Finding Your Purpose and Living a Meaningful Life
Every man is the sum total of his reactions to experience.
Farnam Street • Hunter S. Thompson’s Letter on Finding Your Purpose and Living a Meaningful Life
As I said, to put our faith in tangible goals would seem to be, at best, unwise. So we do not strive to be firemen, we do not strive to be bankers, nor policemen, nor doctors. WE STRIVE TO BE OURSELVES.
But don’t misunderstand me. I don’t mean that we can’t BE firemen, bankers, or doctors— but that we must make the goal conform to the individual, ra
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So how does a man find a goal? Not a castle in the stars, but a real and tangible thing. How can a man be sure he’s not after the “big rock candy mountain,” the enticing sugar-candy goal that has little taste and no substance?
The answer— and, in a sense, the tragedy of life— is that we seek to understand the goal and not the man.