What gives life meaning?

John Donahoe, the CEO of eBay, was interviewed in the NY Times and mentioned the laminated card he keeps in his wallet. It comes from a speech John W. Gardner delivered to the Hawaii Executive Conference in Kona, Hawaii, in April 1993 and published in Stanford, an independent publication of the Stanford Alumni Association, March 1994.

“Meaning is not something you stumble across, like the answer to a riddle or the prize in a treasure hunt. Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you, out of your own talent and understanding, out of the things you believe in, out of the things and people you love, out of the values for which you are willing to sacrifice something. The ingredients are there. You are the only one who can put them together into that unique pattern that will be your life. Let it be a life that has dignity and meaning for you. If it does, then the particular balance of success or failure is of less account.”