“While breaking ground requires courage, so does changing course.  It’s something I’ve come to appreciate as being vital and requiring a good amount of guts.  I call it course correction and it can require the greatest courage because when you alter your course, you’re fully aware of the step you are taking, as opposed to following the instinctive response that may have led you on your present path.

Someone once pointed out to me that missiles are important not because they go straight to their target but because they course correct, so that if they’re fired and they enter a high wind, they crab into it.  If they come to a mountain, they go over it.  If there’s an incoming enemy missile, they evade.  I’ve come to think of life as a  series of course corrections, and I share this philosophy with my students, who are seniors at the University of Texas where I know teach.  They worry so much about what they’re going to be, what they’re going to do when they graduate.  I say to them that what is important is to have a general direction, to be heading someplace with intense effort, but then to be open to all of the course corrections that are possible or that may be compelled.  The more they think of life as course corrections, the more they remain open to opportunities and the less they feel the need to have one answer.  Nobody can, not at any age, these days.  Which is why the courage to forge ahead anyhow is so critical now.”

—Sarah Weddington, Women of Courage