Listening to this quote by Theroux during my walk recently was most timely "the cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run". The audiobooks I listen to can be a hit or miss, but some authors generously share the wisdom of others (such as in this case) that make it worth my while.

In the context of my present life where I am pursuing goals for no defined reason other than that I don't know what else to do, am too afraid to stop without knowing what is next. And unless I stop, breathe and think I will never know what is next and so in a classic Catch-22, I will never stop to discover what is good and right for me. In the meanwhile, I am expending copious amounts of this thing called life. The minutes and hours will all be consumed in the pursuit of things that do not hold intrinsic value for me. 

In my younger years, I was never one to shy away from risk or choose not to do things because others said that it would not work. I had far less stability then and much more to lose and yet I took chances and many of those were good calls. But now it seems like I just cannot "give up" what took a long time to reach. Just because the the journey was long or hard does not make the destination right.