I believe that everyone has a set of gifts. Some of these are more visible and some are more subtle. Some of these gifts are immediately apparent and well-developed, while others need to be discovered and nurtured. There are some people who are highly gifted in a certain area, but are glaringly lacking in others that we take for granted (e.g., the eccentric geniuses). Others have a well-distributed set of gifts, none of which really stands out (e.g., the jack-of-all-trades).

I firmly believe that if you are able to assign a numerical value to all gifts that each person has (including negative values for shortcomings), you will come up with the same average value for each person. In this sense, everyone is equal. But the nice thing is that each person's set of gifts complements those of others, and each person has a unique role to play in this symphony of life ...

I also believe that what makes a person is not that person's gifts per se, but what one makes of them. It's how you play that hand of cards that matters. In this sense, "success" is a relative term, although the more popular (though not necessarily the right) benchmarks are wealth, fame and power.

I believe travel allows one to refresh one's perspectives, or even to discover new aspects of oneself, with the change in environment as well as the different people one meets along the way. Travel often has the effect of realizing the vastness of this world and one's relative insignificance and vulnerability (especially with nature trips). This all the more makes one think of one's role or purpose in life ...