Tara talks about how a person’s actions and inactions add up to shape the course of their lives, but her life was also affected by many seemingly random accidents. To what extent are we shaped by our choices, and by events that happen to us?

Tara's point of view is based on good logic. Our lives are shaped by our choices.

Although there are random events that occur which seem to splash accidental colors on the canvas of our lives, how we blend those colors to suit what we had in mind to paint our being is entirely up to us.

We can either chose to leave the painting as is, (good or bad) or step back to analyze and rethink how the new situation can be managed.

Tara metaphorically describes choices as the sand which is innumerable. They accumulate one layer at a time, and over the years go from layers of sand to sediment, and then to rock. In other words, eventually, we become the summation of all our choices.

Tara Westover (an American) is the author of Educated.

Educated is a book, that describes historically, an account of how she - Tara took some life-changing decisions. She escaped from her family and went straight to college determined to get an education. The word escape is used here because her father was not a believer in western education.

She somehow did, and as she recounts in various ways, how it expanded her worldview and gave her better choices.

Learn more about Tara's story at the following link:

on my last