Take life by the horns. Seize the moment. Life is what you make of it. These are the maxims of rugged individualists. They are declarations of independence. Yet for all our will and grit, the life we forge for ourselves is perilously feeble. We spend decades erecting towers that can topple in minutes. We take great care to steer ourselves around pain, only to find that the road is made of it. We build walls and lock doors to protect ourselves and then fall out a window to our death. As it turns out, we are not the author of our story but characters within it. The only life we have is the one given. And all our taking and seizing and making is mere distraction from the single act meant to define us: Receive.