According to the professor of history Sidney R. Bland, Alice Paul told him that Burns was “never quite as committed as we’d like”— an astounding statement that says more about Paul than it does about Burns, given that Burns also endured hunger strikes and torturous force-feedings. According to Professor Bland, “Lucy Burns was the first of the ‘silent sentinels’ to be incarcerated; she spent more time in jail than any American suffragist.”

Lucy Burns never wanted to live a purely monomaniacal life like Alice Paul’s, but that does not mean she lacked fire or focus. Alice Paul didn’t appear to have much of anything else in her life than her work for women’s rights because, the evidence leads me to conclude, she didn’t feel the need for much of anything else in her life. Lucy Burns, in contrast, did feel the need for other aspects of her life. That Paul focused nearly 100% of her fire on the fight for suffrage and women’s rights doesn’t make her a more worthy template to follow. Lucy Burns also focused her fire during the fight for suffrage, just not in the purely monomaniacal manner of Alice Paul.

By its very nature, this study relies on people with highly visible accomplishments. I worry that some readers might misinterpret this as an implicit worthiness hierarchy that valorizes achieving fame over taking more unseen paths. I also worry that some of the people in the study can feel so unapproachable in what they made of their lives that readers might discount the relevance of learning from them, or be left wondering, “Well, their lives are interesting, but could I ever do what they did?” I share that feeling. Studying Charles Colson made me feel somewhat intimidated by the standard he lived to after prison.

I don’t think of the people in this study as inspirational; I think of them as inspired. I don’t aim to inspire you to be exactly like any of the specific people in this study. I hope, rather, that you’re able to find yourself clicked into frame, inspired by what fits your encodings and ignites your inner fire, and that you commit to pursue it with excellence.

One might expect that I’d wrap up a book like this with a set of recipes for living or a list of ten steps to a better life, or a bevy of helpful prescriptions. The findings of the research and the ethos of this book stand against the very idea of doing that. You might have come to greatly admire many of the people in this study (as did I), but that doesn’t mean you should try to become exactly like any of them. Don’t confuse admiration with prescription, role models with cookie-cutter templates.

Bill Meehan, intellectual provocateur and caring friend, encouraged and challenged me to widen and deepen the scope of what this book is all about. “Don’t waste your time— or your words— on the little questions,” he’d hammer at me. “Go for the big questions, the questions of truth and wisdom and meaning. You need to be more of a poet and less of an analyst, more of a philosopher and less of a strategist” I’ve always built my books on a foundation of rigorous research and empirical evidence, and What to Make of a Life is no exception.