I read Candide when I was 18 while backpacking around Montana and Wyoming. I still remember, clear as a bell, finishing the book in a parking lot of a motel in the town of West Yellowstone. I clearly remember closing the book and sitting there in the sun and just thinking, for a long time, about what it meant and how to apply it to my life.

Great memory for me…but holy cow I must admit if I’d had this article then it would have helped me a great deal! Ha.