After spending the entire day working, I went out to take a walk and read. Perhaps, get a cup of chamomile while I was at it. And on this short walk, which takes about the time it takes me to hum and listen to a full song, I noticed enough things to wash away the drudgery. Then, it took a wonderful turn when I saw a familiar face as I pushed open the glass door. It was someone I met at a party three, four weeks ago. I nodded Hello as I entered and asked what he was doing there, that I came to read there often, and if he was there regularly, too. He said his workplace was nearby, that it was shocking that we had not run into each other yet. How funny that in a city bursting at its seams with ten million people, you can run into someone still! Yet, it happens all the time. Things that seem impossible happen all the time.
Then, I read a little, making friends with Orwell as he told me about his journey with how he came to write and became one of the greats, and I was amazed at how casually he said that he had a phase where he was disillusioned with his words, his writing when he was my age, too. Of course, this little exchange happened where most of our lives happen: in imagination. But it did tell me something I have wanted to hear for a long time. Orwell, in his refreshing and signature honesty, told me there was still time. Time for what? Time for it all, that a quarter does not a whole life make. It leads to something if you keep walking, that you run into people if you keep walking, that you run into yourself, and it happens for all of us, the greats and the plebeians alike, and most greats are just ordinary folk who kept walking.
Perhaps that is the recipe: equal parts possibility and walking. It does not matter how much you do of either, but so long as you do both in tandem, something good comes out of it.