Every traveler knows too well the endless quest for the perfect travel bag: the one that's stylish enough to carry through Paris, sturdy enough to tote around Peru, and - most important - doesn't make your shoulder sag even before you've loaded it up with everything you need for a day of sightseeing.

If I were not African, I wonder whether it would be clear to me that Africa is a place where the people do not need limp gifts of fish but sturdy fishing rods and fair access to the pond. I wonder whether I would realize that while African nations have a failure of leadership, they also have dynamic people with agency and voices.

Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon.

A story is not like a road to follow ? it's more like a house. You go inside and stay there for a while, wandering back and forth and settling where you like and discovering how the room and corridors relate to each other, how the world outside is altered by being viewed from these windows. And you, the visitor, the reader, are altered as well by being in this enclosed space, whether it is ample and easy or full of crooked turns, or sparsely or opulently furnished. You can go back again and again, and the house, the story, always contains more than you saw the last time. It also has a sturdy sense of itself of being built out of its own necessity, not just to shelter or beguile you.

I followed all the advice my mind could compute and digested it to the best of my ability. I'd run, work out, eat healthy, and then swallow a fifth of whiskey. The man cave below my home began to look like a recycling center for Crown Royal and Jack Daniels distilleries. I discovered that empty whiskey bottles made an eerily satisfying thud when stacked up like cordwood. The sturdy glass was much thicker and stronger than my own skin, and I admired their resilience to outside forces.

Like snails, humans are born small but sturdy. While we are shaped by our circumstances, our essence-temperament, traits, and talents-remain with us as we age. Over time, our spirit and strength grow with us like a snail's shell.

"Grandpa found a sturdy branch and used it as a walking stick.