Happy 2015!

“And you know what you learn if you're a New Yorker? The world doesn't owe you a damn thing.”

Lauren Bacall (New York 1924 – 2014)

The world doesn’t owe us anything, and not many people out there are willing to give us a hand for free... However, as long as we face that with the right attitude we may be able to play it in our advantage. Is our life, and we should make the most of it without too much complaining or making excuses. We are the ones accountable for it at the end of the journey, as the poet says so with wise words:

Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate,

I am the captain of my soul.

Invictus, William Ernest Henley (1849–1903)

Happy New Year to SIPA EMPA – Class of 2006 !!!