Formation in one life is the work of making a higher type real in a single existence when no surrounding order will form him. Traditional societies formed men. They had rites, ranks, and a climate that pressed upward. This age forms men downward. The young man who waits to be shaped by his environment will be shaped into what the environment is.
Young men often look for a substitute school, a substitute army, a substitute order that will do the forming for them. Those substitutes, when they exist at all, are partial and unstable. They cannot replace the inner decision. Formation now begins when a man accepts that he is the site of the work and that the work will not be finished by an institution.
This solitary formation is the residual form of the older traditional knowledge of education as a spiritual art. Education once meant the production of a type. It now means the production of a function. The man who takes his own formation back from the age already performs the residual act.
Form yourself as if no one else will. Use whatever instruments the terrain still offers, and refuse to let those instruments become the master. The residual act is to complete in one life the type the world will not complete for you.