How to Discover Your Path in Life
Different stages mold different outlooks in our lives.
A situation you may have faced two or three years ago will be dressed differently now, because you’ll be greeting it differently. Your reflection in the mirror belongs to you, yet it’s not the same you as it was some time ago. Your hair, your height, and your clothes may have changed, but most importantly, your vision has probably changed.
Just like a progressing Apple software, our experiences, trial-and-errors are bound to “upgrade” us. Point being, when you think about it, a mirror reflects a lot more about us than just our appearances. Similarly, reflecting on our thoughts, shows us a lot about the choices that shape us throughout our lives.
Float or Swim
In one of the more beautiful letters from Letters of Note: Correspondence Deserving of a Wider Audience, the words that Hunter S. Thompson wrote to his friend in 1958, can still act as food for thought.
He says,
“To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles…”
And indeed, that IS the question: whether to float with the tide, or to swim for a goal. It is a choice we must all make consciously or unconsciously at one time in our lives. So few people understand this! Think of any decision you’ve ever made which had a bearing on your future: I may be wrong, but I don’t see how it could have been anything but a choice however indirect — between the two things I’ve mentioned: the floating or the swimming.”
He speaks about hard work. It’s as if he laid all his cards down in front of us and said choose. But when we did pick a card and look up, he was no longer there. Letting his words and his magic trick sink in. Our choice was the magic trick. In his letter, he further writes,
“The answer — and, in a sense, the tragedy of life — is that we seek to understand the goal and not the man. We set up a goal which demands of us certain things: and we do these things. We adjust to the demands of a concept which CANNOT be valid. When you were young, let us say that you wanted to be a fireman. I feel reasonably safe in saying that you no longer want to be a fireman. Why? Because your perspective has changed. It’s not the fireman who has changed, but you.“
Here he sews in experience. The change we bring upon us, and how sometimes our own stubbornness, or society’s expectations- start plucking on our petals. Sure, expectations and the ideas we were brought up by could be considered our roots. However, those ideas are still a part of the tree whose stems branch out to mold into the best shape suitable to touch sunlight. Point being, you look at the tree as a whole, because it functions as a whole.
Making a Choice
Another interesting passage from his letter:
” A man who procrastinates in his CHOOSING will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance. So if you now number yourself among the disenchanted, then you have no choice but to accept things as they are, or to seriously seek something else. But beware of looking for goals: look for a way of life. Decide how you want to live and then see what you can do to make a living WITHIN that way of life. But you say, “I don’t know where to look; I don’t know what to look for.”
And there’s the crux. Is it worth giving up what I have to look for something better? I don’t know — is it? Who can make that decision but you? But even by DECIDING TO LOOK, you go a long way toward making the choice.”
Looping back to what he said in the beginning, “would you rather float with the tide or swim for a goal;” what would you do?
Choices are what shape us, because each one of them counts. It would be unfair to say that floating with the flow isn’t the “right” decision. It’s not about right or wrong. Because in the end, it is about what you want for yourself, & what works best for you in order to get it.
All in all, having an idea is already a start, but feel free to take it on a ride before you settle for it.
