In the nearest term, each of your - really our- greatest needs of action and reflection are different. Through each journey of discovery, there lies times, one, when it is vital to open your horizons to see what the world has to offer and how your perceptions could all be shattered; and, two, when you must defend your ability to to be willfully blind to ulterior paradigms with clenched knuckles that death can't unlock.

I will start with a story to share the evolution through such a cycle of revelation -- and YOU, only you, can choose for yourself to rethink how your unearthed destiny is coercing you to destroy your life, or to simply use my words like ear worms popping in the tinder-fuel you need to reach your destination. Here goes:

My high school wrestling journey was prodded at multiple points by coaches and strangers who saw that my goals were set too low: "hey, you can win conference all 4 years", "you shouldn't be aiming for anything less that all state", to "I want to be state champ by my junior year because I can't gamble this life goal on a single-year fluke". I really gree to love it and saw myself change almost overnight from the kid with 4 sports to the force of will wrestler that will break into any gym necessary to train, spend every free period getting in reps and so on... Then one coach told me "you could wrestle D1" which i immediately dismissed - having never been that flattered before in my life. This set me up to know the goals were never too high if you had the time and resources to metallurgy them into reality.

That summer I trained harder than ever to prepare for college competition. I was aware of the huge delta in fitness and the competition these guys had in the room on a daily basis. I was a meathead - no way about it given the sleeves cut off my tees. I love the persona I could assume and the focus no one else could have.

Well, cut to a day of freshman-year practice: Kevin Norstrem slams me so hard I wished I broke my collarbone. But no, it was perfectly fine, I was a pussy, and I sucked at wrestling compared to these guys. Still, I saw my own progress and I dared to believe the dreams of stardom that the coaches fed us. And I chased it.

I had sword rough bumps that hurt but never shattered my ego. The latter would have probably been better for me in the long run if I truly humbled myself and trained retrospectively with my own cringe taped losses. Instead, I avoided facing any failure I had and my style reeked of someone that didn't want to perform with any action taking place whatsoever - I'd rather just have the match be over with minimal interaction altogether. So I never improved where I needed to improve because I reached a starter position too soon and I didn't cope with the losses as somewhere I had room to improve. This continued.

One tragic Interruption from family life further enabled this and turned my diluted chased dreams into using the sport to avoid the reality of my performance and direction in life. I even continued to have stellar feats to this effect where my solution was exercise instead of film-study. As an wiser competitor, I eventually returned to the righteous path of self-improvement and reflection to chase the original vision. Regardless, I gradually understood I probably wouldn't even be a starter at the rate I was improving.

When I had a bittersweet goodbye to sport, I took away a promise that will use this experience of missteps and delusion to be more efficacious in my future by focusing more on whatever goal matters to me. As such, my decision shortly after the season to call my 4th year my final year was an act of proactively focusing my time on my senior project of hypersonics and further engineering.

In the meantime, I took my all-in unadulterated passion for engineering through highly successful years of engineering. And I incorporated my prior lesson by aggressively gaining awareness of the externalities that may ever nullify my fully-engaged efforts in a willfully ignorant era. As I compare myself to a duck: I keep a cool face as I check above water even if I'm paddling all night.

This faint self-awarrness of my life as an engineer reaching an end of I wanted to pursue the life that would fulfill me eventually pushed me to business school. Although my future realities remained forked in two to three prongs, I kept the ground-level research, training, and testing-the-waters active until I was hit with a great opportunity. The chance to start a business using professor's invention had great potential to launch me towards my goal or set me back considerably...

As I stand now applying for roles, I have been set back. Yet, I am much more adept at many things - even at recognizing the reality of an improbable path long before it wrecks me. The reality still hurts but I know how to walk the path back to good, better and great. And I have a clearer vision of the work, effort, minuscia, and holy covenant I need to make in order to succeed in my largest goal.

I am amidst the greater cycle as I learn my intertwined, morbid livelihood constraints. I'm this iteration, the tools, rewards, and costs are more robust, dire and - well somehow simplistic and inconsequential. The dichotomy exists because the meaning is ascribed by a fickle spectator who's love can fleets from the destination to nostalgia for the journey as soon as a tragedy can strike.

I endorse the ability to put meaning into your work because the best philosophers have never spoken a word about philosophy, but instead of the truths that people live, which map to any individual's. So, take an assessment of what loose ends must be be tied or cut. Train smart. Most of all, show us what you got.