life-defining

One of my current research projects has led me to read extensively a genre of which I'm especially fond due to its hybridity and potential for experimentation: travel writing. And I especially like it when written by intrepid, unabashed ladies with a sense of humour.

I've just come upon this most interesting travelogue by Dervla Murphy, Muddling Through in Madagascar (1985). As I open it, I'm struck by the epigraph, taken straight from the OED entry:

muddling through: 'to attain one's ends in spite of blunder after blunder'.

Amazing indeed how certain phrases have the power to define a whole life - to define our journey through life.

This too would be a most appropriate epigraph for my own life story, were I ever to write it...