the watch of time

There is a tendency to look for the shaping forces of our existence outside ourselves. Success and failure are unavoidably related in our minds with the state of things around us… The tendency to look for all causes outside ourselves persists even when it is clear that our state of being is the product of personal qualities such as ability, character, appearance, health, and so on.

It is understandable that those who fail should incline to blame the world for their failure… (The successful too, however) are at bottom convinced that their success is the result of a fortuitous combination of circumstances. The self-confidence of even the consistently successful is never absolute… Thus, the resistance to change and the ardent desire for it spring from the same conviction, and the one can be as vehement as the other.

                                                                excerpted from The True Believer (pg. 16)                                                                                         Eric Hoffer (1951)