Its been a while since I hopped back onto this train of thought, but this one goes deeper to when one of my best friends asked me, both of us perched atop a rock in Dinosaur National Park, how I was navigating through all the noise to find the places I worked at, and to discover the things I was working on. For some reason, back in the moment, the answer was so crystal clear to me.

After some thought, I tried to explain it in the most visual way possible. I think this really might’ve been the first time that I truly tried to take something written in my own brain language (Tomanese) and tried to translate it into plain English. It came out something like this;

You know, just like an old war room where theres a big map of the places you might need to be, and a bunch of pieces denoting your troops and perhaps the enemy’s? I see it that way. Its good to have a big picture of all the possibilities and where they can extend to. But then its also super important to be able to pick up your piece, and say, this is where I want to go. Put that piece down.

Then pick up your other pieces, and start placing them in between where you are now, and where you want to be, breaking down the actual path to get there. It’ll be clearer that way. Once you start going on that, then I think eventually, you’ll either change the final destination, or you’ll be there before you know it.

Thinking back on all those words now - I think I had it completely wrong. I made sure to update the same friend on this now. I think the setting shouldn’t start in a war room, but rather a large lake in a beautiful park.

You’re standing in the lake - submerged to the knees and maybe even the upper thigh. You have a palm sized rock in your hand, and you throw it as far as you can in the direction you’d like to go - maybe you see a cool mountain, stream or a source of light and you’d like to check it out.

The catch is this- the moment your rock returns to hit the surface of the water and dips below, its sort of gone. You know the general direction in which it went, but theres really no way to be sure - unless you marked it, dove underwater and found the rock… but why?

In any case, now you’re treading or swimming or backstroking towards your rock, and on the way, you’ll probably discover some cool things, scary things, or interesting things. Feel free to stop and explore that, and who knows? Maybe that’ll change the course of your direction. You pick up another rock then, and you throw it again. Keep going. Go at your own pace. Float there if you want, or try to beat Michael Phelps’ lap PR if you’d really like to try. But keep going.

Now, whether the lake has an edge or not, is really up to you. Maybe thats when we all grow old and truly have some things nailed down, we feel comfortable leaving the lake and maybe getting on a boat. But for now, it seems like being lost, and treading with purpose is the best way to go. We’re all lost to a certain extent, aren’t we?

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