Henry David Thoreau's Search For Meaning

Henry David Thoreau said, at one time, “If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.” I would say that while this is correct by way of defining success as the result of action, life isn’t always at the control of the individual, and that a person who single mindedly follows a goal will find themselves exhausted, when a better direction can be taken.
Thoreau’s assertion has truth: Nothing happens in a state of inaction. The life of a human being is like the plotline of a story, and unless the character does something, the plot cannot and will not move forward. For example, in the movie Stranger Than Fiction, Harold Crick

The other side being the idea of allowing life to happen, rolling with the punches, and going with the flow. This isn’t to say one should be passive, rather that one should accept what happens and respond in such a way that begets creativity. Part of the art of Zen is to dance, in a way, with life. A Taoist story tells of an old man who accidentally fell into the river rapids leading to a high and dangerous waterfall. Onlookers feared for his life. Miraculously, he came out alive and unharmed downstream at the bottom of the falls. People asked him how he managed to survive. "I accommodated myself to the water, not the water to me. Without thinking, I allowed myself to be shaped by it. Plunging into the swirl, I came out with the swirl. This is how I survived." The significance of this is that our entire lives, we are told to pursue goals against all odds, that if we only work hard enough and fight long enough, great things happen to us. While that does hold truth, much like Thoreau’s assertion, one must also learn to accept life as it is and to do the best they can under the circumstances they are