Once More, With Feeling

I am currently reading a book (as a thesis study break) that includes Joan Gould's essay entitled, "Once More, With Feeling" which tells the story of having a baby at age 40. It was a touching essay, with the following excerpt that I really liked:

"Would I have decided to have baby if I had known that Martin would die in his fifties? The other way around, would I have survived as well without a child who demanded strength from me rather than weakness? How can I tell? At the important junctures in our lives, when we fall in love, marry, conceive a child, pick a vocation, we are inspired by our gut if we are lucky, rather than our brain. We choose a direction, with no idea where it will take us or how we will change along the way.... I can only say that my choice of direction -- which is not the same as destination -- was as conscious as any I have made in my life. As the philosopher Martin Buber once put it, 'All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.'"