But whether I shall leave this room by the back stairs or the front staircase when I go down to have tea is not yet decided, and the decision is entirely my own. There may be a very strong probability of choice in one direction or the other, and there may be a possibility of external influence being exerted of which I am not conscious, but the choice is and remains mine. We are masters of our fate and we are encouraged to be up and doing. We are told that the sins of omission, the lost opportunities, are far more frequent, and may be much worse and more difficult to set right, than the sins of commission. A sin of commission is something positive, which may be tackled, but the inaction of a lost opportunity is a negative quantity, and something which cannot be grasped and rectified.
Inaction leads to apathy, the greatest danger that imperils our continued progress.
Everything is planned and the planning is not final. With each human failure to follow the plan made for us, there must be readjustment and a new plan. The new may not be as good as the original, but it will attempt to salvage something, and to give further opportunity to achieve the essentials of the original plan. And as all our actions have their wide reactions upon the lives of others, a failure on the part of one may have wide repercussions on the plans for others, all of which will have to be readjusted to meet the new conditions. We are assured that even death by accident is not accidental.