Do You Know Where You Are Going?

Do you know where you are going??   my previous blog question was "do you know who you are?"........are these concepts connected do you think?.......if you don't know who you are, how can you know where you are going?......conversely, if you don't know where....... etc etc........and does it even matter?

I've known some who intuited vividly what they wanted from life.  since childhood they had a clear image of their dream career, partner, home, family.......but they didn't appear to to have a plan for how it all ended, at what point success could be claimed.   it seemed to a young jeni a risky mindset fraught with the risk of disappointment and disenchantment.   i often wonder how many of my peers achieved all they hoped, but i suspect there were a lot of compromises essential along the way.

Clarity has never been a gift i could lay claim to.  mostly it seems as though life happens to me by chance rather than choice, a random set of stepping stones that drop me off at interesting points along the way, allowing me to dally for a while before dropping out from under my feet requiring a quick hop to the next one if i'm not to drown. 

Some of those slabs have been slippery and slimy and i struggled simply to keep the feet dry.   some were sprinkled with dreams and star dust and would have been most pleasant a place to tarry, to grow old in but it was not to be.   others were steps to learning and growing, their parameters expanding as each lesson was successfully absorbed before tipping me off ready for the next stride.  sometimes the path was wreathed in mists, swallowed by a corridor  of ambiguity, leading into a darkness so profound that the tunnel itself was unseen let alone a light at the end.

Yet, although i had no overarching plan or blueprint to follow or even goals to aim for, somehow each step seemed to lead logically to the next when viewed in retrospect.  every stop-off seemed to pave the way inexorably onwards principle by principle to  the place in the universe i now inhabit.   

Strangely i don't find this mercurial tendency at all unsettling, to the contrary, it's almost a relief not to feel the necessity to strive to meet self imposed strictures.   call it irresponsibility if you like......but it seems to have worked for me.