Where Are We Headed?:

The question is simple. The answer might take us a lifetime to find. And perhaps most of us will be nearing the end of our lives by the time we figure it out.

That is why I think we need both a long-term and a short-term outlook on life. If we stretch the long term far enough, the destination is the same for all of us. We all come to an end. But the short term is where we experience happiness, satisfaction, achievement and meaning.

We need something meaningful to look forward to, not just something meaningful to look back on. We can reflect on the past, but we cannot return to it. And when we look ahead, we inevitably carry reflections of the years behind us.

I did that exercise recently. When I looked back, the first things that came to mind were regrets and guilt. But I soon realized there was very little I could do about what had already happened. What bothered me more was that I didn’t feel particularly good about the immediate future either. The distant future was simply too foggy to make sense of.

I spent over a week trying to understand what my mind was telling me. And I came to a realization. The future is not necessarily better than the past, but it contains possibilities that the past no longer does. I still have some control over what lies ahead. And I carry with me the experience of everything I did well and everything I could have done differently.

Of course, that is easier said than done. Life is perhaps a process of carrying a torch into a future that remains blurred for reasons beyond our control. We are left with two things. A past we cannot change but must own, and a future we cannot fully predict but can still influence.
And that made me think about purpose.

Perhaps we don’t need one grand purpose that explains our entire existence. Maybe we need a purpose for today, this week, this month and perhaps the coming year. These are the horizons within which we can actually make plans and take action.

Yet we often spend our mental energy in two places where we have the least control. The past and a distant, imagined future.

I need something to look forward to every day, whether at work or outside it. I need to imagine a version of myself a year from now that I would like to move towards, professionally or personally. If one part of life does not offer that possibility, perhaps another can. Some people find it in both.

So the question is simple. Where are we headed? But before answering that, we need to ask something else. Where is our head right now? What occupies our mind at this very moment?