Memories have huge staying power, but like dreams, they thrive in the dark, surviving for decades in the deep waters of our minds like shipwrecks on the sea bed.
Burning desire to be or do something gives us staying power - a reason to get up every morning or to pick ourselves up and start in again after a disappointment.
I try to keep in mind that it's a long journey. It's not a race. It's about staying focused, continuing to do good work, make my family and community proud; that's all I really want to do... and pay my bills.
Building a successful company (or living a happy life, for that matter) is not about embracing someone else's philosophy, but staying true to your own beliefs about the world and learning from the mistakes you make along the way.
Setting a goal is not the main thing. It is deciding how you will go about achieving it and staying with that plan.
I was so afraid to go out west to my aunt's ranch. But the only choice my mother gave me was to go for two weeks or all summer. I wound up staying all summer. And that's where I learned about cattle. I could relate to their behavior, their fears.
So curiosity, I think, is a really important aspect of staying young or youthful.
The sad truth is that the civil rights movement cannot be reborn until we identify the causes of black suffering, some of them self-inflicted. Why can't black leaders organize rallies around responsible sexuality, birth within marriage, parents reading to their children and students staying in school and doing homework?
The river is constantly turning and bending and you never know where it's going to go and where you'll wind up. Following the bend in the river and staying on your own path means that you are on the right track. Don't let anyone deter you from that.
I really enjoyed staying at an encampment at the top of a hill in the Samburu Reserve in Kenya. You reach it on a small plane; there is no electricity, no city noises and you sleep and shower under the Milky Way, with moths fluttering around a kerosene lamp, knowing that there are elephants and lions roaming free in the valley.