“Having caught people’s attention in this way, I’ve thought long and hard about what lessons my life might hold for others, young people especially. How is it that adversity has spurred me on instead of knocking me down? What are the sources of my own hope and optimism? Most essentially, my purpose in writing is to make my hopeful example accessible. People who live in difficult circumstances need to know that happy endings are possible.”

In this section, Sotomayor has been talking about what compelled her to write a memoir, as opposed to a more formal autobiography. Past justices, she says, have not written so intimately about their personal lives. The questions people have asked her—about what made her optimistic and driven despite the challenges she faced, both physically because of her diabetes and systemically because of family and economic issues—made her realize that her personal story, both of her struggles and triumphs, could provide inspiration for others who struggle in similar ways. Throughout the book, she talks about the importance of having living models of the goals one wants to achieve. Writing her memoir is one way she makes the theme of overcoming adversity through community less abstract and more concrete, as Sotomayor herself experienced with her mentors.

“But experience has taught me that you cannot value dreams according to the odds of their coming true. Their real value is in stirring within us the will to aspire. That will, wherever it finally leads, does at least move you forward. And after a time you may recognize that the proper measure of success is not how much you’ve closed the distance to some far-off goal but the quality of what you’ve done today.” 

Here, Sotomayor acknowledges that what she achieved—becoming a Supreme Court Justice—is not a realistically achievable goal for most people, so to make this a goal and determine one’s success or failure in life based on achieving it is unrealistic. Instead, she encourages people to have dreams that propel them forward, one step at a time. She explains how she achieved a series of smaller goals along the way and returns to this point throughout the book.