On Taking the Next Step
Every day we answer the question, “What’s next?” Often the answer is dictated by habit: when I get up in the morning, I immediately make my way toward the bathroom to get ready for the day ahead. I don’t think about it deeply, or at all. But when we stop and think about the next step in our life journey, we may find it hard to choose exactly where our foot should land. A hiker walking along a well-worn path can proceed without much consideration, but if I want to live a full life, I can’t always go with the flow.
The well-marked path is for sleep-walkers who settle for whatever life brings. It suits those who prefer to avoid discomfort and self-doubt and accept themselves exactly as others and their past have defined them. But that is neither the life I want to lead, nor can I recommend it to others. I want a life pilgrimage that broadens and deepens me, increases my impact and sharpens my intellect while shaping my moral character. In short, I want to live a good life.
I aspire to a life of work and leisure pursuits that extracts every ounce of my potential. I want to be surprised when I look back on my career from a vantage point a few years ahead. This is the trail I have walked, but with occasional bouts of sleep-walking in mundanity along the way. I recommend you follow my example, but not in all ways. I have often gone wrong, especially by self-identification with my work, taking my self-worth and purpose from my career. But if you can avoid my faults and indulge my self-reflection, I think there is much to recommend my pattern of living, which revolves around a continual attempt to learn, to develop new skills, and to use my abilities for the benefit of others (and to create an income for my family and myself to enjoy).
Frequent rest stops for moments of reflection and gratitude can transform our attitude and understanding of the purpose of our life journey. I am not here talking about the popular platitude of whimsical thankfulness to nameless deities. There is no magic in often repeated mantras and positive talk if it is not founded on truth. Rather, gratitude is a posture of living that acknowledges life is a gift, given, not self-created. Gratitude lets me accept my smallness and powerlessness against the vast political machinery, economic manipulation and fierce forces of nature that characterize this age. But such gratitude neither diminishes my worth by mistaking smallness for insignificance, nor accepts delusions of grandeur. It does not seek to create a self-sufficient, self-engineered life of external success.
As a small-but-significant pilgrim through life, I accept that this journey and life itself are gifts. I reconcile myself to the reality that it comes with good and evil, pain and pleasure, and believe that regardless of its sometimes heavy burdens it is good, when taken as a whole. The entire journey is both a gift to receive and an asset to invest with care.
When I see that all my life, my body, mind, knowledge, gifts and skills, have been given to me, I no longer accept the myth of the self-made man. If life is a gift, I can believe that my next step, whether routine, carefully planned, or an intuitive guess is also a gift that will help me grow. Each next step is not a referendum on my value as a person but an avenue for growth. I am one small person among many, so my next choice, no matter how earth-shattering it may seem to me, is relatively unserious. And if so, it can be taken lightly. I can set aside the burden of expectations (of others and of myself) and experiment with abandon.
I recommend you conduct experiments similar to my own. I have consistently found ways to do freelance work on the side, switched jobs frequently, learned new skills habitually, and set aside time every day for reading as widely as possible. Adopting such habits will create survival skills that allow you to thrive even in conditions others find harsh and challenging. Rather than wilting under pressure, you can grow like a dandelion through a crack in the pavement. And like the onlooker at that weed thriving where none should be, you will be a little surprised by the outcome of your career.
Your career is different from mine. That is a given. But if you’ve dedicated yourself to learning and experimenting, I expect you will find some similarity. I started as a carpenter’s son working on construction jobs, then worked in retail and traveled with a southern gospel group singing and playing guitar. I then became a graphic designer, programmer, and system architect. I did not leap from one sort of job to another. Rather, I felt curiosity and interest—an inner pull that drew me toward new ideas and options. I wanted to find work that challenged and engaged me, and I wanted location independence. These factors guided my decisions. Looking back on it, I don’t recall any step of the way feeling like a discontinuous leap into the dark. Each step was a choice to take a small step off the beaten path, but with some inner pull toward a destination I glimpsed like smoke from a welcoming campfire above a dense thicket a little way ahead.
But even a journey of experimentation will include some plodding. After all, a continual change in direction will never arrive at a destination, spending energy without impact. When I feel tedium creeping in, I often look to my time outside my daily work responsibilities to provide variety. This means getting up at around 5AM to enjoy a few hours of reading, writing, or working on a project that engages my curiosity and applies ideas I’m learning. I sometimes feel stuck in my career, but I never have to feel stuck anywhere else—after all, work does not define my worth or dictate my range of interests.
You and I are not our work, but work is still vitally important. It is probably the primary way we will serve others and its financial rewards allow us to flourish rather than to merely exist. And if you, like me, are a Christian, you know how Jesus gave his life for us. His example is an ever-present reminder that we small-but-significant pilgrims are not here for ourselves primarily, but for others. Work and career are an expression of our purpose in that sense only—they allow us to serve and love those that God saw fit to place along our path. But loving and serving others has never been the sole domain of work in the marketplace. It extends to family, friendship, to church and community.
When we walk a life path, conventional or radical, that seeks to improve the lives of others along the way, we need not fear retirement and aging. Our status of work or retirement need not hinder adding to our store of knowledge and conducting of new experiments. We can face every stage of life with undiminished purpose because our ability to help others increases every day through accumulated wisdom. From birth to death, we will leave a deep imprint on fellow travelers, especially on coworkers, friends, and family.
