Playground

by Richard Powers

No human being knew what life on Earth really looked like. How could they? They lived on the land, in the marginal kingdom of aberrant outliers. All the forests and savannas and wetlands and deserts and grasslands on all the continents were just afterthoughts, ancillaries to the Earth’s main stage.

I ended every hiring interview with a question: “What’s more important: the journey or the destination?” Either answer was fine with me. I was just looking for how much bounce the candidate was willing to put into it.