Nothing in life is so rigidly ordained that man cannot influence, modify, or even divert it in some way. This is because the preordaining factor is not wholly outside himself: it exists in his own past, which through the law has been brought into his present. If he will really make the present a fresh experience, and not merely a copy of the past, he works creatively upon his inheritance. For instance, a man who is destined to die at an early middle age because he neglects his body, is careless about his health, toils so over-ambitiously to increase possessions or improve position that he fails to rest as well, will certainly die then. But a man in a similar case who awakens to his danger, takes life more easily and learns to relax, does not try to do too much for his strength or time or dissipate his energies in other ways, will lengthen the number of his years.
-- Notebooks Category 9: From Birth to Rebirth > Chapter 4 : Free Will, Responsibility, and The World-Idea > # 103
