Scott - great job, a terrific accomplishment!
The title of your thread reminds me of a story I learned in college which may answer the question you asked. I remember it more because of the irony than because of the almost self-evident truth it contained. Sorry it's a bit long, but it is funnier that way....
Once upon a time (kidding, this is a true story) there was a Psychologist who performed a nearly life-long experiment. In this experiment, he was studying only two single things. The first he called the physical life-line, a set of measures designed to show the relative health of the person over 20-30 years. As you might expect, his measure peaked out in late adolescence and gradually declined over time, then towards the end on average there was a turning point steeply downward followed by death. Now, by itself this measure seems meaningless and self-evident.
The next thing he measured was a little more interesting. He called it the Life-goal line. This measure used a series of questions to evaluate how each person in the study was setting and actively working towards short, medium, and long term goals. Again, as you can imagine, the line started low in children (not good at self-directing their goals); became strongest during their most productive years; and declined later in life - but NOT ALWAYS.
This man wrote a book in which he discussed his experiment in detail, and part of that book is presented in virtually every introductory psychology class today. In that book he presents an astonishing piece of information. You see, he took the two charts for each persons life and plotted them on a single graph - and the evidence was inescapable. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the life-goal line did not FOLLOW the physical life-line, it PRECEDED it. In hundreds of cases across decades of study, the results were almost 100% accurate. In cases where people had been deathly ill but became impassioned with a new goal in their life, miraculous recovery often occurred. In those who had mild physical decline and then gave up pursuit of their goals, death followed swiftly.
He further identified two basic groups of people branching at mid-life. He noticed that around mid-life, most people step back from themselves and evaluate their lives to date. Some said to themselves, "Hey, I've pretty much done everything I ever wanted!" Others said, "Hmmm, pretty much looks like I'm never going to get all the things I wanted."
Do you think that observation was important? If you said "yes," you are in the majority - and you are dead wrong. It was WHAT THEY DECIDED AFTER THIS that determined the remaining nature of their lives.
You see, it doesn't seem to matter whether or not we attain the goals we set for ourselves. What matters is what we decide next. Those who "had it all" and said to themselves, "I'm done! I'm retiring" - this group's goal-line turned sharply downward, and their physical health followed shortly thereafter. Similarly, those who had never attained their dreams and then said, "There is no point trying, I'll never succeed," also perished in short order.
The other two groups made different decisions. For those who had attained their goals, they sat down and did some serious thinking about, "Ok, what do I do next? I know, I'll ...xxx yyy zzz" Those who fell short of their early goals but said, "you know what, I set my sights to high. Instead, I'm going to ... xxx yyy zzzz" Both of these groups led happy and productive lives SO LONG AS THEY KEPT SETTING AND PURSUING THEIR GOALS. Yes, of course our physical bodies surrender at some point, but the difference in lifespans was DECADES, not WEEKS.
The point is, we have a great deal of choice about how long we are in this world. If you love building aircraft, I recommend you build another. Some of us don't have time or the inclination to build, and will be blessed with what you create.
Oh, by the way...
I mentioned that this psychologist was taught in every elementary psych class. Do you think they mention the importance of his life's work? If you said "Yes," you are dead wrong!
In attempting to analyze how people prioritized their goal setting, he grouped goals he had analyzed into rough groupings as a way of helping him understand the basic mind-set of his subjects. He realized that some goals are very basic to survival, while some were quite complex - but that so long as someone had not met their needs at the most basic level they had little time to think about the more complex goals. Thus, in ONE CHAPTER of this book of his life's work he slapped together this little picture that represented how his groupings of goal-types related to each other, some depending on others. His diagram was in the shape of a Pyramid, and since it was about the only original-looking diagram in the book students pounced on it as, "Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs."
Maslow reportedly hated that this was what people took away from his life's work, just as the famous physicist Schroedinger hated the cat thing...
