“The greatest rewards in life are often delayed. The financial benefits of work and investing. The emotional benefits of marriage and friendship. The psychological benefits of creating something that matters. Meaningful outcomes take a long time to grow and compound.

Furthermore, most pursuits involve other people: coworkers, spouses, children, peers. If you want your results to continue to grow, then you need relationships that last.

One of the essential ingredients for success is being pleasant and trustworthy because it allows whatever you are building—a business, a relationship, a project—to continue. Many relationships disintegrate before the rewards accumulate.”

I try to take myself as who I am today, in this chapter, because I understand that my life unfolds over sand dunes and not mountaintops. It is always shifting beneath my feet, sometimes on the up, other times on the down or even the sides. There is no mountaintop. A mountaintop implies stasis anyway, yet the process of becoming never ends. The knot of wanting, the web of betterment... they never untangle.

There are no destinations. Just open road, some good views, and the shedding of multiple skins until the last one.