In his novel Exit West, Mohsin Hamid captures the mindset of college students living in an unnamed city being torn about by Islamic radicals:
“It might seem odd that in cities teetering at the edge of the abyss young people still go to class—in this case an evening class on corporate identity and product branding—but that is the way of things, with cities as with life, for one moment we are pottering about our errands as usual and the next we are dying, and our eternally impending ending does not put a stop to our transient beginnings and middles until the instant when it does.”
Since most of us view our lives as far more significant than just “pottering about” across “transient beginnings and middles,” being intentional matters.
It matters in big and small choices. It matters in terms of success or failure, happiness or despair, life or death.
It matters in terms of making our own meaning.
