Situations of challenge, crisis or calamity can serve to bring out the best in people who have innate abilities or hidden courage. I am certain that most readers of this book would return a wallet they found on the street (to choose a rather tepid test of integrity). Perhaps a smaller group, and yet some, would run into a burning building to rescue a trapped child. A good many of us would not hesitate to stand up to political tyranny.

But life rarely cooperates in giving us ready-made scenarios for proving that we are stuffed with something other than cotton. Most of us live in an era of relative freedom and comfort. Outside challenges simply do not appear, and we could strain our necks seriously if we couldn't take a step without keeping an eye out for that lost wallet.

But we don't need any of that. In everyday life we also take steps and create new meaning. The step, for us, may be revolutionary: deciding to marry or divorce, changing careers, speaking our minds against opposition. The change may be more gradual, incremental, like reading a new book, making new friends, changing a tired routine. The key is that you don't have to be George Washington, Martin Luther, Freud, Bill Gates or Elvis to join in with the other humans who create something—new meaning for themselves and others—out of nothing. All you really need to do is know that human life is new, that it is not all “written” yet, and that you have the imagination, the wonder, the impulse and (as we shall see later on) the need to enlarge the scope of human life—starting with your own life.