excerpted from
What Makes A Life Significant

The William James excerpt deals well with the difference between the utopian and the real. The piece called to mind my Irish grandfather, who was an iron worker and helped to build the early skyscrapers in Chicago. When he died on the job, my grandmother went to work in a garment factory, and my mother dropped out of school at fourteen to work in a candy factory to support the family. Mom was an avid reader by that time, and she educated herself at the public library. They were determined to build a better life for themselves and for us.

When I was working on my dissertation and tempted to quit, I tapped into their courage and fire. To borrow Robert Pirsig’s word from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, they had “gumption.” They kept doing the hard work. They got me through.