Where do you want to go?

A weary traveller reached an intersection and asked a sage he found there which road to take. When the sage asked him where he wanted to go, he was clueless. Take any road then, the sage shrugged and advised, what difference does it make?   

Know where you want to go first

This story rings a bell because in my journalism work the question that disturbs most interviewees is the question of where they want to be, say in five or ten years. They often give hazy answers, meaning few people have a vivid mental picture of where or what they want to be some years from now. 

That's what complicates the progress of many; we are struggling because we have not sat down to determine what it is we truly want in life, and how to get it. There's no corporation or institution without a vision and mission statement around which its business revolves.

We must do the same, for to live without vision and mission is to live purposelessly and meaninglessly. We will be like a man who on his wish-list wants to be rich and live in a castle and marry the most beautiful woman in the world but never really wakes up to do something about his dreams. 

Thomas Jefferson said, "If you want something you have never had, you must be willing to do something you have never done." To be a man or woman of great attainments, one must live life with singleness of purpose – waking up everyday with an idea and execution plan in line with one's life goals. It begins with a grasp of self; the inherent power and intellect and how we can use that to define and fulfill our aspirations. 

Like the story of the traveller who reached the intersection but realized he had no idea where he wanted to go, it is self-defeating to go to work everyday without a true purpose. Is it to save enough money to build a house, marry a woman and start a business or do I work merely to feed without ever pausing to think about tomorrow?

The man without life goals is the man in a rocking chair that keeps him in motion but gets him precisely nowhere. Life is filled with meaning if we realize we all are visionaries not focused on just fulfilling personal ambitions but ones that have the mandate of leaving this world better than we found it.