Everyone has at least one painful moment or even a series of moments in coming to greater awareness in life–at least of the way the world works, which may actually be a diminishing of what one thinks one knows or believes is possible–where who they think they are, who they think they can be, comes into conflict with reality, the evidence of the outside world.

There is no right answer in how one responds–on the scale of accepting reality or resisting it, fighting to retain faith in the possible or figuring out another way, another direction in life. Or, on the other hand, feeding that inner flame, nurturing the spark in the face of a world’s skepticism, keeping alive a possibility despite all evidence or the logic of statistical likelihood. But one’s response says a lot about one’s character. The famous stories are legion: a 14-year-old black growing up in Harlem who recognizes for the first time, “the moral barriers that I had supposed to exist between me and the dangers of a criminal career were so tenuous as to be nearly nonexistent” before discovering the possibility of becoming a voice for civil rights through a literary career. The author who finds in that insight a new basis for building self respect, and writes a 1961 essay about it for Vogue magazine. (James Baldwin) The aspiring nun who considers that when God closes one door, he opens a window. (Maria Von Trapp) The author who resists the implied judgment of 26 rejections to keep submitting for publication a work that turns out to be an enduring classic that has not gone out of print in 50 years. (Madeleine L’engle)

How does one strike that balance between listening to one’s own inner voice and listening to what the world is saying about that inner vision? It’s an ongoing navigation, and the pilot strengthens his or her skill the longer he or she stays on the water learning the currents and the winds and the creatures of the sea–allies and threats.

“Sometimes it’s worth doing something even when you know you’re going to lose,” Astronaut Janice E. Voss said, because “it’s important to let people know it’s important.”