Without direction, we drift.
“Without direction, we drift. Others will shape and direct us. With reflection, we can understand and even bend the trajectories of our lives” — Montaigne
Imagine a fish, asleep in the water. In the current, she gets brought along downstream meeting other dish and bumping into rocks and watery debris.
Then a fish from another school smacks into her, sending her spiralling off in another direction. Or a submerged log sends her spinning into the riverbank.
Above the waterline, our fish indeed appears to be moving downstream. But of course, the forces that act upon her are external: the power of the current that surrounds her and hapless interactions with other watery creatures.
She has no control over where she’ll end up if she continues.
Now, if she was to wakeup and decide her course of direction, she will have to think to decide where she would like to swim instead.
To do this of course, she will need to engage her fishy brain and her fishy body to get there and it’s not going to be easy.
She will have to contend directly with the force of the stream, distractions of the other creatures and the submerged obstacles that lie in wait.
Her bruises still fresh, she must now prepare for more.
But this time, she gets to choose what bruises to take. Not the river.
It’s going to be tough but luckily, she’s a fish. This is what she was designed for. This is what she’s made for.
Self-direction is a difficult endeavour.
As one contends with the forces of life, the well-meaning but poorly executed will of others and the unforeseen circumstances that arise will certainly come up and we will all be a challenged.
Committing oneself to the the upfront work of deciding who you want to be and what you want out of life is critical if we are to live a fulfilled-life, whatever you deem that to be.
Then employing a structure of reflective practice and you are more likley to stay on course when the undertow comes for you.
If we are to get battered by the journey of life, wouldn’t it better to pick which bruises to receieve rather than have them inflicted upon us without permission?
As Mark Manson wrote,
“What flavour of shit sandwich would you like to eat? Because here’s the sticky little truth about life that they don’t tell you at high school pep rallies: Everything sucks, some of the time.”
