I recently read the Journals of Lewis and Clark, a nearly day-by-day account of the expedition sent by Thomas Jefferson to survey the Louisiana Purchase. Here is one journal entry from Meriwether Lewis on his birthday, while passing through what became the state of Montana.
Sunday, August 18, 1805
“This day I completed my thirty-first year and conceived that I had, in all human probability, now existed about half the period which I am to remain in this sublunary world. I reflected that I had as yet done very little, very little, indeed, to further the happiness of the human race or to advance the information of the succeeding generation… [I] endeavor to promote those two primary objects of human experience, by giving them the aid of that portion of talents which nature and fortune have bestowed on me, or in [the] future to live for mankind as I have heretofore lived for myself.”
With improved health and longer lifespans today, maybe people can get away with having this thought at age 39, instead of 31 (though Lewis only lived another four years). But still, for someone who had achieved much at a young age, what a journal entry.
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