There are just so many choices.
Do you want to live in the city and be able to walk everywhere, meeting new people every time you go out? Or do you long for acres of quiet where the only noise disturbance comes from the angry-sounding blue jays?
Do you want the ocean at your doorstep, or the mountains outside your window?
Do you want to be fit and have a Hollywood physique, or do you like to eat?
Do you want to tend a garden or travel the world?
The only answer I can definitively give is that I want acres and acres of property on the ocean that is in walking distance of a small town that has delicious restaurants that few people ever go to and that everyone knows me there but also stays out of my business and that every calorie-laden favorite I have is suddenly good for me and delicious with less calories than an asparagus spear.
Whew.
But alas, that option doesn’t appear to be available–at least not anywhere I’ve been so far.
Life is full of choices that often mean settling for one and discarding the other.
That’s why one of the best things you can do for yourself is to get clear about what you want.
Flotsam and Jetsam
When I was a kid, I loved tossing sticks into streams and watching them navigate the current.
Some would right themselves and glide through rapids like they knew exactly where they were going. Others would get stuck in the muck almost immediately. What fascinated me was how often I was wrong. The ones I was sure would make it didn’t. The ones that looked doomed somehow kept floating long past where I could see them.
Those sticks were flotsam and jetsam. Just pieces of wood pushed wherever the current decided.
We’re not supposed to live that way.
We’re supposed to make decisions. Choose directions. Decide what kind of life we want to build instead of drifting wherever the current happens to take us.
At least that’s the theory, if you’re not a stick.
It’s All Been Done Before
This season, I feel a little like one of those sticks.
Part of it is that there are several new things happening in my life right now. Things I can’t fully control. For someone who likes to know where she’s going and what she’s having for dinner every night, that can feel unsettling.
Especially when I’m supposed to be writing a book about clarity for high achievers.
The rough draft is about seventy-five percent done. On paper, that should feel like progress. Instead, I’ve felt oddly adrift.
Part of the problem is that I’ve always liked finding a new path. A different way to get somewhere.
In school, I used to get frustrated during science experiments when the teacher already knew exactly how they would turn out. The entire scientific community knew how they would turn out. We were just repeating the steps.
I wanted to experiment with something that might surprise us all.
That same instinct has been following me around while writing this book. Since I started, I’ve seen at least four other people release books on a similar topic.
And I know what I would tell anyone else in this situation. I wrote about it in The Glinda Principle. The topic might be the same, but the voice and the story never are.
Still, there are moments when it makes me feel a little… dull. Like I’m just repeating an experiment where everyone already knows the result.
The Truth About Clarity
But the older I get, the more I realize something about clarity.
It isn’t permanent.
We talk about “figuring out what you want” as if it’s a destination. As if once you arrive there, the path stays paved forever.
It doesn’t.
Figuring out what you want is like landing a helicopter on a moving boat.
Sometimes the landscape shifts. Circumstances change. New questions appear that you didn’t know to ask before.
And suddenly the person who usually has a plan finds herself standing in the water again, watching a few sticks float past and wondering which direction the current is actually going.
The difference is this.
When I was a kid, those sticks had no say in where they ended up.
We do.
Even in seasons when things feel uncertain, we still get to decide whether we’re drifting or steering.
Right now, I may not know every turn ahead.
But I do know this.
I’m not flotsam.
And neither are you.
Sometimes the most important thing isn’t knowing exactly where you’re going.
It’s remembering that you still get to steer.