Our lives are not a hodge-podge of separate experiences, though they
sometimes seem so. They are held together by simple things which we
behold again and again with the same emotions. Thus the man is what the
boy has been; the tree is inclined in the precise direction the twig was
bent.
My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
_William Wordsworth._