Seven Lessons Learned from George Donner:

The shortest path between two points is rarely a straight line:  While this may not be true in geometry and track, it is true for everything else in life.  If you have lived long enough to look back on your progress from one point to another, you will quickly see that it is never a straight line.  The path to the next important thing isn’t completely under our control.  It is like the sailor who charts his course and waits and observes the telltales (little strips of cloth tied to the sale that give him an indication of where the next wind will come from).  Just like a sailboat tact’s, we too turn left, then right, on the way to our goal.