# Hunter S. Thompson's Letter on Finding Your Purpose and Living a Meaningful Life

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## Metadata
- Author: [[Shaun Usher]]
- Full Title: Hunter S. Thompson's Letter on Finding Your Purpose and Living a Meaningful Life
- Category: #articles
- URL: https://news.lettersofnote.com/p/beware-of-looking-for-goals-look

## Highlights
- Every man is the sum total of his reactions to experience. As your experiences differ and multiply, you become a different man, and hence your perspective changes.
    - Tags: [[growth]] 
- This goes on and on. Every reaction is a learning process; every significant experience alters your perspective.
- WE STRIVE TO BE OURSELVES.
- but that we must make the goal conform to the individual, rather than make the individual conform to the goal.
- to let another man define your own goals is to give up one of the most meaningful aspects of life— the definitive act of will which makes a man an individual.
- And there’s the crux. Is it worth giving up what I have to look for something better? I don’t know— is it? Who can make that decision but you? But even by DECIDING TO LOOK, you go a long way toward making the choice.
    - Tags: [[meaning]] 
- I’m not trying to send you out “on the road” in search of Valhalla, but merely pointing out that it is not necessary to accept the choices handed down to you by life as you know it. There is more to it than that— no one HAS to do something he doesn’t want to do for the rest of his life. But then again, if that’s what you wind up doing, by all means convince yourself that you HAD to do it. You’ll have lots of company.