I often think of Auden's poem "The Horatians": "We can only / do what it seems to us we were made for, look at / this world with a happy eye / but from a sober perspective.” That's my ambition, and controlling my attention helps me to draw closer to it.

Alan Jacobs,  in thought-provoking post on reflecting and sharing

Michael Chabon:

I find the continuing mission of Voyager 1 so moving, for the way its name alone evokes a time of promise, for the thought of that tiny contraption way out there in the vastness at the edge of the heliosphere  —  perhaps the farthest any human-made thing may ever travel  —  a bit battered, swiftly aging, still doing the work it was purposed to do. 

I feel exactly the same way, but also claim a self-description: I too am "a bit battered, swiftly aging, still doing the work [I] was purposed to do."