“Do you need to give yourself permission to do something big for your special year? Just imagine, as an alternative, spending the rest of your life being dragged behind the Great Dane of your overcommitments to others. For five minutes it’s cute. Over a lifetime, it destroys what’s best in you and what’s unique about you. If you don’t care about that, it’s too bad. Maybe they got you, all those voices working away from the time you were a little [child], trying to convince you that your only needs were to meet other people’s needs. But I think you do care. A lot.”

Mira Kirshenbaum, The Gift of a Year (Page 151)