I love the discipline and the process of writing. I toil away on a desktop computer in my study at home. On the wall to my left as I work at my desk, just next to my bookshelves, hangs a photographic portrait of General (and later President) Ulysses S. Grant. The photo was taken in 1864 near Cold Harbor, Virginia, during the darkest days of the American Civil War. Grant wears the rumpled, plain-blue garb of a three-star Union general (he commanded all of the Northern armies at the time) and he takes a relaxed pose while standing on muddy ground outside of his headquarters tent, one hand resting against a tree and the other on his hip. The fighting at Cold Harbor was some of the most terrible of the entire war. One can almost see a hint of pain and sadness in Grant's bearded, care-worn face as he looks unsmiling at the camera. But his visage, reflective of the overwhelming responsibility of his position and the terrible life-and-death decisions he was required to make, also projects high intelligence, quiet confidence, extreme focus, and grim determination.

The portrait is situated such that Grant looks directly at me- his gaze is intense- while I write. When my attention wanders or my energy wanes, this picture serves as an inspirational reminder that I must forge ahead, for time is precious.

Grant was born in 1822 in Ohio and was a middling student at West Point. He fought bravely in every significant engagement of the Mexican War in the 1840s. After the war he developed an unfortunate fondness for alcohol, left the army, and experienced embarrassing failures as a businessman and farmer. As the contentious issues of slavery and secession came to a boil and war clouds gathered anew, Grant labored as a humble clerk in his father's dry goods store in Galena, Illinois.

With the onset of the Civil War in 1861, Grant returned to his one true calling and the profession at which he came to excel, arguably, beyond any other soldier in American history. He began the war as a regimental commander but was rapidly promoted, ultimately rising to the rank of lieutenant general and appointment by President Abraham Lincoln as general in chief of all U.S. forces. Grant proved a brilliant strategist and a stubborn fighter who won the war by ruthlessly using the superior numbers and material resources of his mighty armies to slowly but relentlessly bludgeon his formidable Southern enemy into submission.

Grant emerged as the great hero of the war and went on to serve two terms as the eighteenth president of the United States. Though he was himself a man of high personal integrity, Grant's administration was riddled with corruption, and his presidency is regarded by most historians as a failure.

In the 1880s, as a result of another unlucky business venture, Grant lost his entire life savings and fell heavily into debt. Friends had encouraged him to write his memoirs, but he was reluctant because he believed that there would be little interest in his story. Finally, for the purpose of taking care of his family he felt compelled to begin writing. The famous novelist and Grant's good friend Mark Twain volunteered to help him in the publication process. The effort to complete his Personal Memoirs became a profound struggle because in the same month he began to write (September 1884) Grant, who was a life-long cigar smoker, was diagnosed with inoperable throat cancer.

Grant now knew that time was truly precious because he was dying. He desired nothing more than to ensure that the person he loved above all others, his wife of thirty-six years, Julia Dent Grant, and their children, would be financially secure when he was gone. He threw himself into his mission with the same powerful determination that won the Civil War, writing mostly in pencil on a pad of paper, fighting incapacitating pain every hour of every day.

Historian Geoffrey Perret writes in his excellent biography, Ulysses S. Grant: Soldier and President, "Part of the secret of his success as a general stood revealed as he bent to his final task, not only in the power of his will but in the clarity of his mind. Drugs did not seem to color his thinking, nor did physical exhaustion, lack of sleep, intense pain, or impending oblivion. He treated all of these as irrelevant or, at most, irritants, and focused tightly on the task at hand." Grant finished the book on July 19, 1885, and three days later he was dead.

The opening words to the preface of the Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant contain a quotation borrowed from a fifteenth-century devotional book, and then Grant's understandably fatalistic observation concerning that quotation: "'Man proposes and God disposes.' There are but few important events in the affairs of men brought about by their own choice."

The Personal Memoirs became a smashing success and to this day are regarded as a classic of American letters. Grant's dying wish came true as his family experienced a financial windfall from sales of the book. Sometimes, even sad stories can have a bittersweet, if not entirely happy ending.

Recently, a number of people in my wider network have either been diagnosed with or died from inoperable cancer. The wife of a former co-worker. The daughter of a close associate. The mother of a dear friend. A respected colleague, father, and friend with whom I worked years ago. Wonderful human beings all. I am continually reminded that life is fragile and fleeting. The flame burns brightly, but all too briefly, and then it goes out.

Wherever you may find yourself in your own journey, if you have a burden to overcome- take it on. If you have a task to complete- get going. If you have someone who needs to know that you love them- tell them. But through it all, don't forget to enjoy the here and the now. Take heed of the beautiful sentiment and powerful truth that is captured in the well-known quotation, "The past is history, the future is a mystery, but today is a gift; that's why they call it the present."