Every now and then, I think about people who are no longer here and ask myself what they left with me. A lesson. A phrase. A moment I still can’t fully explain.
Mr. McNally left me a question.
He was teaching us about entropy in his AP Chemistry class and asked why the air in a bicycle tire doesn’t simply settle to the bottom.
Air has weight. Gravity acts on it. So why doesn’t all the air sink to the lowest part of the tire like a pile of sand? Why does it keep pressing outward against the walls?
It’s a simple image, which is probably why I still remember it almost fifty years later.
The air inside the tire is made up of tiny particles moving rapidly in every direction. They collide with each other, and with the inside wall of the tire. Those collisions create pressure.
Gravity is present but its pull is weak compared to the thermal energy of all those molecules.
The air fills the space it’s given. It presses outward. It resists settling.
That old chemistry question came back to me recently as a life question.
What keeps us from settling? From succumbing to the gravitational pull in all of us.
Staying where life feels familiar. Waiting for more certainty. Keeping the pattern because changing it will cost us something.
Waiting sounds reasonable. It borrows the language of patience, prudence, and practicality. And at times, those are the right virtues. Wisdom often tells us to slow down.
But inertia can dress itself up as wisdom. Fear can call itself realism. Comfort can pretend to be peace.
That’s when we begin settling to the bottom of our lives.
The air doesn’t fulfill its purpose by collecting in the lowest place. It fills the available space. It presses against the walls. It creates pressure because motion is still happening inside.
Human life has its own version of that energy.
Purpose. Discipline. Faith.
These keep us from sinking into the lowest-energy version of ourselves.
The tire reminds us that pressure comes from movement. A life with purpose has an outward push to it. It presses against fear, complacency, and inertia. It expands into the space it has been given.
We don’t have to be reckless or maintain constant motion. But we need enough internal purpose to overcome the quiet pull of our internal gravity.
I’m grateful Mr. McNally asked that question all those years ago. At the time, it was a chemistry lesson about entropy, motion, and pressure.
Decades later, it’s still teaching me.
The tire doesn’t fight gravity. It just has something inside it that never stops moving.
I think that’s all any of us can ask of ourselves.
Graduation has a way of making ordinary questions feel enormous.
What are you going to do next?Where are you going to school?What trade are you going into?Where are you going to work?What are you going to do with your life?
That last question is the one that sneaks into our subconscious. It turns our celebration into a test. It makes a young person feel like their next decision carries the weight of the next fifty years.
Trust me. It doesn’t.
You’re not choosing your whole life this year. You’re choosing the next step.
That next step still deserves careful thought. Some choices will open doors; others will close them…and some will make the road harder than it needs to be.
But don’t hand this one decision more power than it deserves.
Your first job isn’t a life sentence. Your major isn’t your permanent identity. Your first trade, internship, military assignment, certification, apprenticeship, or business idea marks where the road begins, not where it ends.
Most lives travel roads we couldn’t have mapped in advance. One small opportunity today may connect you to a person who changes your direction entirely. One ordinary job may teach you something that becomes useful ten years later. A disappointment may save you from staying on the wrong road for too long.
You may move around. You might take a job that makes sense now and later discover it doesn’t fit who you are or what your life requires. Your priorities will change. The economy will change. A job can be a great opportunity, but it is rarely a lifetime guarantee.
Employers may invest in you when you serve their needs and (fairly or unfairly) move on when they believe you no longer do. Doors may close for reasons having little to do with your effort or character. That doesn’t mean you failed. It means you’re living in a world that keeps moving. Knowing that can help you walk into each opportunity with your eyes open.
Character, hard work, and skills all carry weight, but many opportunities come through people. The people who trust you, teach you, recommend you, challenge you, and remember how you treated them may influence your future in ways no resume ever could.
Build your life on something stronger than the assumption that one company, one industry, one credential, or one carefully written plan will carry you safely from here to retirement.
Learn how to add value. That phrase sounds like a business platitude, but strip away the jargon and it’s the oldest human question. Can people count on you for something real?
Can you solve a problem? Can you make something better? Can you be trusted with responsibility? Can you communicate clearly? Can you tell the truth when it would be easier to hide? Can you learn something new without treating the need to learn as an insult?
Can you help the people around you succeed? Can you walk into a messy situation and leave it better than you found it?
People who can do these things will usually find a way forward. Maybe not on the exact timeline they imagined. But useful, trustworthy, curious, steady people tend to create options for themselves over time.
Graduates hear a lot about jobs, majors, trades, degrees, salaries, and careers. All are serious things, and they deserve real thought. It’s good to learn skills. It’s good to earn your living and eventually support a family if that becomes part of your life. It’s good to contribute useful work to the world.
But your career isn’t your whole life.
A great resume with a lonely heart is still a lonely life. A strong paycheck with shallow relationships won’t feel as rich as you think it will.
A respected title can’t sit with you at the kitchen table. It won’t laugh with you around a campfire. It can’t pray for you, forgive you, challenge you, remember old stories with you, or show up when things are going wrong.
Much of your deepest joy will come from the relationships you cultivate. The people you love. The people who love you. The friends who walk with you. The family you stay connected to. The conversations you remember years later. The long drives. The late night talks.
The unexpected kindness. The forgiveness given and received.
By the time you graduate, you may already know some of the people who will still be part of your life fifty years from now. You won’t know which ones yet. Some will drift away. Some will surprise you and stay.
And after graduation, you’ll meet more. Pay attention. One may become your spouse. Some will teach you. Some will test you. Some will need your help. Some may help save you from yourself.
The world will ask what you do. But life will eventually ask better questions.
Who do you love? Who can count on you? Who tells you the truth? Who do you encourage? Who do you forgive? Who have you helped carry a burden they couldn’t carry alone? What are you doing with your soul?
These questions will stay with you long after the name of your first employer has faded into the background.
Choose the school, the job, the trade, the service path, or the next assignment with as much wisdom as you can gather. Ask questions. Do research. Talk to people who have walked farther down the road.
Listen to your parents, even when you think they don’t fully understand the world you’re entering. They may not understand every tool or pressure you face, but they know more than you think about disappointment, responsibility, sacrifice, and love.
Then move.
Do the work in front of you. Show up on time (which is 15 minutes early). Tell the truth. Be easy to trust. Learn the tools. Respect the people. Ask better questions. Pay attention to what gives you energy and what drains it. Notice where your abilities meet someone else’s needs. Be willing to change direction without turning that change into a personal crisis.
A wise life is rarely built from one perfect decision made at eighteen or twenty-two. It’s built from thousands of smaller decisions made over time. Some will be mistakes and that’s part of the deal.
The goal isn’t to live without mistakes. It’s to tell the truth when they happen, learn what they have to teach, repair what you can, and keep walking with a little more knowledge than before.
Graduation is worth celebrating. You finished something difficult, and finishing should be honored. Enjoy the moment. Thank the people who helped you get here.
Then take a deep breath.
You don’t have to solve your whole life before the celebration is over. You won’t know every turn, every job, every friendship, every disappointment, or every joy waiting along the way.
You have enough to take the next step with care, humility, gratitude, and hope, trusting that life will teach you more as you walk.
Peace is often defined as the absence of something.
The absence of conflict. The absence of noise. The absence of pressure. The absence of the next problem.
But peace is less about absence and more about order.
I recently heard peace described as tranquility of order, a phrase with roots going back to Augustine. In City of God, he wrote that “the peace of all things is the tranquility of order.”
This doesn’t suggest that peace only arrives when every problem has been solved, every relationship has been repaired, every task has been completed, and every loose end has been tied off.
That version of peace is impossible to sustain.
Life keeps moving. There’s always another hurdle to clear, another obstacle to navigate, another decision to make, another issue waiting around the corner. Just when we think things are finally settling down, something changes.
The pursuit of peace isn’t the pursuit of a trouble-free life.
It’s the pursuit of a rightly ordered life.
Priorities in the right order. Relationships in the right order. Responsibilities in the right order. Ambition in the right order. Rest in the right order. Attention in the right order.
That kind of peace doesn’t just happen to us.
We create it when we decide what deserves our attention and what doesn’t.
We create it when we stop letting every urgent thing pretend to be the most important thing.
We create it when we clean up a workspace, finish a lingering obligation, repair a strained conversation, or finally admit that something has been taking up more room in our life than it deserves.
We create it when we make the next good decision, even when everything around us is still imperfect.
I’ve always found real satisfaction in this kind of work. A confused or stalled project. A messy process. A cluttered schedule. A team that needs direction. A home project waiting for the right next step. A piece of land slowly shaped into something useful and beautiful.
There’s something deeply rewarding about creating enough order for people to breathe again.
That doesn’t mean controlling everything. In fact, the best kind of order often requires us to hold things loosely, leaving room for the unexpected, and trusting that people, plans, and possibilities are better tended than controlled.
Order, at its best, creates room for life.
It clears enough space for thought. It creates enough structure for trust to build. It gives people enough confidence to move. It helps us see what belongs, what doesn’t, and what needs attention next.
And then, occasionally, we experience it.
A quiet morning. A settled room. A finished project. A table full of people we love. A trail cleared through the woods. A plan that starts to come together. A day where the pieces seem to fit, even if only for a while.
Those moments may not last forever, but they remind us what we’re aiming for.
Pursuing tranquility of order is the steady work of arranging our lives around what is good, true, useful, loving, and worth carrying.
When life feels too overwhelming to arrange all at once, we can start small. The next right step, the next honest action. The next one thing that brings even a corner of our life back into order.
We won’t always get it right.
There will always be disruptions. There will always be pressure. There will always be something that knocks our papers off the desk just after we get them stacked.
But we can keep returning to order.
We can return to our priorities. We can return to our responsibilities. We can return to the people we love. We can return to the work that has been entrusted to us. We can return to the kind of person we’re trying to be.
Peace isn’t found by escaping the noise.
It’s built, little by little, when we keep putting the most important things back where they belong.
Photo by AO NURA on Unsplash – There’s more to this peaceful image than it appears. Growing. Cutting. Drying. Raking. Baling. Each step in its right order. Each making the next possible, leading to this image. The work isn’t finished. Those bales still need to be moved and stored.
But we can enjoy this. The proper order. A moment of tranquility.
Many of us have felt it. That quiet, persistent yearning for life to just settle down for a while.
We imagine a stretch of road where the strain lets up, the demands lighten, and we can move forward without so much weight on our shoulders. We tell ourselves that after enough years, enough lessons, enough work, and enough milestones, there ought to be a time when things begin to coast.
That hope is understandable. We carry a lot. We get tired. We get worn down.
But easy rarely waits for us around the bend. More often, what comes instead is something better.
Perspective. Wisdom. A clearer sense of what’s worth our energy and what’s worth leaving behind.
With time, we may carry life with more grace. We may stop pouring ourselves into things that never deserved that much from us. We may learn the wisdom of laying down false guilt, unnecessary fear, stale resentment, and the crushing expectations that come from trying to live someone else’s life.
A good bit of suffering comes from carrying weight we were never meant to bear.
Of course, knowing what to set down is its own kind of work. It takes honesty to name what we’ve been carrying needlessly. It takes courage to actually let it go.
But even after we set those things down, effort remains. That’s a feature, rather than a flaw, in life’s design.
Work requires our attention. Relationships ask for our patience. Growth brings discomfort. Purpose calls for sacrifice, and faith asks for trust.
Effort remains part of a life that’s awake and engaged.
Sometimes what we call easy is really just familiarity. We know the terrain. We know the language. We know how to move around in it. That can feel easier, but familiar things can still cost us. They can still ask for endurance, humility, steadiness, and resilience.
Maybe relief is the most honest word for what we’re seeking.
We want a little less pressure. A little less uncertainty. A little less disappointment. A little less striving. We want room to breathe.
There’s nothing wrong with that. Relief is human. Rest is holy. Recovery matters.
But relief differs from a life free of demands. And deep down, most of us would find such a life unsatisfying.
We may say we want to coast. We may fantasize about “easy street.” We may imagine how nice it would be if everything just ran smoothly for a while. But too much ease has a way of hollowing us out, leaving us restless, a little purposeless, quietly bored with ourselves.
We were made for engagement. We want to build, help, solve, shape, encourage, contribute, and grow. We want to know that our presence still counts for something.
That’s why a completely easy life, if such a thing existed, would probably disappoint us pretty quickly.
We were made for meaningful effort, and that’s where we find ourselves most alive.
The question, then, is less about whether life will ever become easy and more about whether we’re giving ourselves to things that build something in us and around us. Things connected to purpose, love, responsibility, service, growth, and calling.
Giving ourselves to the right things helps us stop feeling sorry for ourselves and start paying attention again. It steadies us for the chapter we’re in, rather than the imaginary one we hope will arrive.
As long as we’re here, there’ll be something in front of us asking for effort.
Some goals are big enough to carry us for a long time.
They lift our eyes. They fill ordinary days with meaning, connecting our work to something larger than the moment in front of us.
That vision matters.
It gives shape to sacrifice. It helps us endure hard things because we can see where we’re trying to go.
But big goals have a way of becoming heavy.
Sometimes the distance feels too great. The work takes too long. The gap between where we are and where we want to be can leave us discouraged before we’ve gone very far at all.
That’s when it helps to bring the goal down to just the next step. The next mile. The next call. The next page. The next hour of honest work.
We don’t accomplish great things all at once. We get there by doing the next thing that needs doing.
The small task gives us traction. It pulls us out of vague ambition and back into motion.
But this has its own challenge.
Sometimes the next step feels too small. Repetitive. Disconnected. We can lose heart in the middle of faithful effort simply because the work in front of us seems too ordinary or meaningless.
That’s when we need to lift our eyes again. Remember why we started. Who this serves. The person we’re trying to become.
Focusing only on the big vision, we risk becoming dreamers who admire the mountain and never climb it. Living only in the next task, we can become people who just keep moving and slowly forget why.
Our strength comes from learning to move between the two.
When the goal feels too big, narrow the focus. When the next step feels too small, widen the focus.
The vision gives meaning. The step gives traction. We need both.
My niece is turning 21 in a couple of weeks. That milestone prompted me to go back and read a post I wrote in 2013 called Advice for a New 21-Year-Old.
Reading it now, I still stand behind it. But a lot has changed in the world and in me since then. A 21-year-old stepping into adulthood today faces a different landscape than the one I was writing about then. After more than a decade of watching young people navigate it, I think an update is in order.
Back in 2013, I intentionally opened with drinking and gambling. Those are two of the classic threshold items attached to turning 21. Things the world suddenly says you’re allowed to do.
Turning 21 feels significant in part because it comes with new freedoms. New access. New choices. New opportunities to say yes to things that used to be off limits.
But if I were to distill what I want to say today, it’s this:
The most important part of turning 21 isn’t what you’re allowed to do. It’s what you’re responsible for doing with your new freedom.
On Drinking
Back in 2013, I wrote specifically about types of alcohol, mixing drinks, drinking water between drinks, and a few other practical things. The tips were fun, and I meant them. But what I was really trying to say was simpler.
Don’t let alcohol become the thing that teaches you who you are.
A 21-year-old can easily mistake access for maturity. Being allowed to drink is one thing. Knowing how to carry yourself is another.
If you choose to drink, stay in charge of yourself. Stay aware. Stay responsible. Don’t confuse recklessness with fun, or excess with adulthood.
There’s nothing impressive about losing control, hurting people, damaging your future, or building habits that begin as entertainment and slowly become dependence.
Freedom says you can. Wisdom says you don’t always have to.
On Gambling
Gambling is worth talking about, less for the casino tips and more for what it teaches us about life.
A lot of life will tempt you into thinking you can outsmart systems that were built to profit from your confidence. Sometimes that system is a casino. Sometimes it’s consumer debt. Sometimes it’s a flashy investment story. Sometimes it’s just your own belief that you’re the exception to every warning sign.
Understand the odds. Understand the incentives. Understand that some games were built for you to lose slowly enough that you keep playing.
That lesson applies far beyond cards, dice, and slot machines.
On Money
At 21, your income may still be modest. Your savings may be thin. But your financial decisions aren’t any less meaningful.
This is the age when you should begin learning how money actually works.
Learn how to live below your means. Save at least 10% of your income, always. Learn how savings accumulate and compound over time. Einstein called compound interest the most powerful force in the universe, and he was right.
Learn how debt can easily grow if you allow it. Learn how investing works. Learn what markets do over time. Learn what risk is and what it isn’t. Learn how compounding works for you, or against you.
Don’t hand the whole subject over to experts and decide this isn’t for you.
It is for you.
Nobody can make this investment in your understanding except you. It’ll take effort, time, and discipline, but the payoff will be enormous. The earlier you begin, the more options you give yourself later.
On Taxes
This is one area I would add much more explicitly today.
Taxes shape your paycheck, your investments, your business decisions, your home decisions, and your retirement decisions. They are one of the most powerful forces shaping the economy around you. Most people your age treat taxes like background noise. They are anything but background noise.
Learn how federal income taxes work. Learn how your state handles taxes, including property taxes. Learn the basic tax forms. Learn what withholding is. Learn the difference between deductions and credits (it’s a big one). Learn how capital gains differ from ordinary income.
Most importantly, learn how and why governments shift tax policy. You’ll find that it’s often less about revenue generation and more about encouraging or discouraging certain behaviors. When you understand this, the debates about tax policy start making a lot more sense.
You don’t need to become a tax attorney. But you do need to stop treating taxes as some mysterious thing that happens in the background while adults in suits handle it for you.
The sooner you understand taxes, the less often you’ll be surprised by them.
On AI and Paying Attention to the Future
This didn’t belong in the 2013 version the way it does now.
If I were talking to a new 21-year-old today, I’d tell them to learn how to use AI well.
Not as a crutch. Not as a substitute for thinking. Not as some fantasy weapon that will let you dominate the world.
Use it as a tool.
Use it to expand your access to knowledge. Use it to test ideas. Use it to get a rough draft or minimum viable product moving. Learn what a minimum viable product is and why it matters so much to growth.
Use it to make an idea more tangible. Use it to model possibilities. Use it to iterate faster. Use it to tighten your thinking by forcing your vague idea into something clearer and more real.
An idea in your head can feel pretty smart. The moment you try to express it, structure it, test it, or build it into something visible, you’ll begin to see its strengths and weaknesses. AI can help accelerate your thinking process.
A lot of people are afraid that AI will eliminate jobs, upend industries, and leave ordinary people behind. That fear is understandable. But the larger pattern is nothing new.
History is full of major technological shifts that changed the economic framework people were living in. Industrialization changed everything. Then electricity. Then assembly lines, cars, computers, the internet, and smartphones. Each wave brought creative destruction. Old methods faded, old jobs shrank, new opportunities appeared, new leaders emerged.
AI is doing the same thing now. And the people who will thrive aren’t the ones who wish the old way would come back. They’re the ones paying attention to where the world is going, and responding.
Pay attention to what’s becoming easier, faster, cheaper, more valuable, or more scalable. Pay attention to which skills are fading and which ones are growing. Then adapt. Learn. Position yourself well.
That’s a far better response than fear.
On Health
At 21, most people feel almost invincible. That feeling can fool you into thinking poor habits are free. They aren’t. They just send their bills later.
Make physical activity a normal part of your life. Build it into your routine so deeply that you miss it when it’s absent. Walk. Run. Lift. Stretch. Work outside. Stay active in ways that make your mind and body stronger, more capable, and more durable.
Healthy habits pay real dividends over time. Energy, mobility, resilience, mental clarity, confidence, longevity, and quality of life. These aren’t accidents. They grow out of a disciplined and consistent approach to taking care of yourself.
If you build a strong base now, your future self will thank you.
On Faith
A 21-year-old may or may not have ever been meaningfully exposed to faith. Some were raised around it. Some were barely around it at all. Some were exposed to a shallow version of it and walked away before they were old enough to examine it for themselves.
But by 21, your openness to faith is your responsibility.
Faith should never be reduced to pretending. You don’t need to manufacture certainty where you still have questions. But you should stay open enough to seriously consider that life is more than work, pleasure, achievement, money, and survival.
Ask the bigger questions.
Why are you here? What is good? What is true? What does it mean to live well? What does it mean to love well?
These are foundational questions. If you ignore them, you’ll still build your life on some kind of answer. You just may not realize it.
Faith has a way of changing the scale of everything. It changes how you think about suffering, success, failure, purpose, love, forgiveness, responsibility, and hope. It gives context to things that otherwise feel random, hollow, or purely material.
Stay open. Read. Ask. Listen. Seek out serious people of faith, not just loud people with opinions.
You don’t have to have everything figured out at 21. But you’re old enough to begin seeking honestly.
On Learning from Good People
Find good people and pay attention to them.
Look for people whose lives make sense up close, not just people who look impressive from far away. Find people who have built something solid. Who work hard, keep their word, love their families well, handle money responsibly, and have endured difficulty without becoming cynical.
Ask questions. Watch what they do. Learn from their patterns.
At 21, you’re old enough to choose your influences more deliberately than ever before. Choose wisely.
On Freedom
Turning 21 brings new freedom. But freedom by itself is only raw material.
What matters is what you build with it. You can use it to drift, indulge, imitate, and react. Or you can use it to build capability, health, wisdom, faith, discipline, and a life that stands up under real weight.
That’s the better use of it.
The world tends to celebrate 21 by pointing to what you can now do.
I’d rather point to what you can begin becoming. That’s where the real opportunity is.
Happy Birthday, Isabella, from your favorite uncle.
Some of the fears running things in our lives were never ours to begin with. We watched someone lose and decided losing was the lesson. We watched someone speak up and get burned, so we got quiet. We watched someone try and then called their failure a warning. We told ourselves we were being realistic when we were just hiding safely behind their wreckage.
We rarely see the whole picture of someone else’s failure. We don’t see the blind spots, the ignored warnings, the weak foundation, the compromises nobody talked about, or the timing that was just off. We only see the ending, and then we build ourselves a new law out of it.
Something inside us says, See? That’s what happens.
No. That’s what happened.
One word. One syllable. The difference between a lesson and a life sentence.
Fear is a fast learner. It sees one example and it moves. It doesn’t wait for data. It doesn’t wait for context. It doesn’t wait for us to think.
Sometimes that’s exactly right. Some roads do end in ruin. Some boundaries are wisdom. There are dangers in life that should be taken seriously the first time, not the fifth.
But fear can collapse categories too quickly. It can treat a predator and a conversation as though they deserve the same response.
One difficult conversation becomes I’ll never bring that up again. One rejection becomes I’m done. One betrayal becomes Trust no one.
Fear stops being a warning. It becomes a tyrant. And tyrants imprison more than they protect.
Sometimes it isn’t safety we’re protecting. It’s our pride. Our delicate image. The deep terror of being seen trying and coming up short. That type of fear can sound like logic. It can sound like experience. And it can rob us quietly for years.
I’ve seen people let one example define them. One disappointment. One humiliation. One loss. One story, often somebody else’s story, lodged deep in their imagination.
But one example is a terrible god. It asks for too much. It explains too little. And it leaves too many good things untried.
Fear only needs one example.
Our wisdom must decide how much authority we give it.
The idea was simple. If you look closely at life, you’ll see that everyone is climbing something.
A career. A relationship. A difficult time in their lives. A personal challenge.
Life has a way of placing mountains in front of us. Or maybe…we’re just good at finding them.
As I wrote back then, the climb only makes sense from the inside. Watching others or hearing their stories are no substitute for taking it on yourself.
There was another part of the metaphor that mattered even more.
Many of us start the climb with backpacks full of things that make our journey harder than it needs to be. Old resentments. Lingering disappointments. Criticism that stuck with us longer than it should have. Sometimes we even carry baggage that belongs to someone else.
Years later, I came across a Buddhist parable that gave a new wrapper to this idea. It described people walking through life carrying large boulders. Anger. Ego. Grudges. The suffering didn’t come from the boulders themselves. It came from choosing to pick them up.
Whenever a hill approached, I had a habit of shifting into an easier gear before the climb even began. It felt like preparation. It felt like the smart thing to do.
One day I tried something different. Instead of downshifting, I shifted to a higher gear and pushed harder.
To my surprise, I climbed much faster than before, without bonking like I thought might happen.
Sometimes growth means discovering we’re stronger than we realize.
That experience raised questions I still ask myself.
Where else in life do I downshift before the hill arrives?
Am I protecting myself from difficulty…or underestimating what I’m capable of?
Recently, I read a post by Tim Ferriss about the “self-help trap.” He described sitting around a campfire one evening with a small group of close friends, the kind of unhurried night where the conversation slows down enough for truths to surface. He found himself thinking about the fire, and then realizing the fire wasn’t the point. The people sitting around it were.
He described how easily we can become so absorbed in optimizing ourselves, tracking progress, chasing improvement, climbing toward our next summit, that we lose sight of why we started climbing in the first place.
Summits will eventually fade. Our achievements will blur with time. Recognition disappears quicker than we expect.
Perhaps the real work of self-improvement is simpler than we think.
The rocks we’re carrying were never necessary.
The hills we fear are usually smaller than we imagine, or remember.
And the fire, the one worth tending, isn’t the one powering our ambition. It’s the one we gather around with the people we love.
A sentence in a science fiction novel stopped me recently. It was a small line, easy to roll past, but it stayed with me long after I put it down.
“I’m proud of my imagination.”
I found myself wondering if I had ever thought of it that way. Proud. The bigger question that followed was a little more unsettling. Am I still using my imagination fully, or is it something I can see, but always remains just a few steps beyond my reach?
Most of us think of imagination as something that belongs to childhood. Living room forts. Long summer days that lasted forever. Stories invented simply because it was fun to live inside them for a while.
Then life moves forward and the tone shifts. Our imagination grows up with us. It gets invited into planning meetings and project updates. It earns its place by helping things get built, improved, delivered. It becomes practical.
That kind of imagination matters. It’s the force behind homes that rise from empty ground, companies that begin as ideas scribbled on paper, and communities that take shape one decision at a time. Many of the most meaningful things in life begin with a simple question. What if this could exist? And then our imagination stays long enough to help bring it into the world.
Yet there’s another layer, the one that’s harder to reach. Imagination without a destination. The kind that wanders. The kind that lets our curiosity move without a map, without an audience, without a finish line waiting just ahead.
Modern life doesn’t make much room for wandering. We reward clarity. We celebrate speed. Productivity gets our applause. Wandering gets a polite nod and then we move on.
Even creativity, when it happens, can start to lean toward usefulness. We think about who might care, how something might land, whether this is worth sharing. Before long, our imagination is wearing work clothes every day.
Still, the wandering version never disappears. It shows itself in moments we almost miss. A line in a book that makes us pause. A quiet walk where our thoughts drift farther than we planned. Standing on an open piece of land and picturing laughter and conversations that haven’t happened yet, paths that haven’t yet been carved.
Those moments feel different. The air seems a little wider. Time stretches just enough for possibility to breathe.
Imagination is our ability to see long before we start to solve.
Across a lifetime it takes different forms.
-Playful imagination delights in possibility simply because it can. -Building imagination turns vision into action and ideas into reality. -Generative imagination pictures future experiences, future conversations, future memories waiting somewhere ahead.
Most of us live primarily in the second and third forms. We plan, design, and visualize. We imagine with purpose. The playful version visits less often, but when it arrives it carries a spark that feels unmistakable.
Part of what makes it harder to access is our internal voice of evaluation. Our mind asks its questions automatically. Does this make sense? Is this useful? Would anyone care? These questions help us bring ideas into the world. They also narrow our horizons.
Artists talk about the deep joy in creating something they love for its own sake. Then a second round of joy when that creation resonates with others. The order matters. Self first. Audience second. When the sequence holds, the work feels alive. The same may be true of imagination itself.
Imagination grows stronger when it has somewhere to roam. It expands when it’s allowed to exist without immediate purpose. That permission can live in small choices. Letting a thought run a little longer. Following an idea that seems interesting even if it leads nowhere. Sitting with possibility without rushing to decide what it means.
The wandering and the purposeful are partners. Each strengthens the other. The freedom to explore deepens our clarity to build. When imagination has room to stretch, what we create carries more life inside of it.
That line from the novel stayed with me because it felt less like a statement and more like a quiet commitment. To keep my imagination active. To keep it close at hand. To let it wander often enough that it never forgets how.
Maybe that’s the invitation for all of us. Keep a small door open. Let imagination step outside the boundaries of usefulness from time to time. Let it explore without needing a reason.
Because the farther our imagination travels, the richer life feels when we return.
Photo by Dobranici Florin on Unsplash – I can imagine a bunch of things in this photo, but the main reason I chose it is the way the sun glows on the fence posts. I made you look again, didn’t I.
For the next two weeks, I’ll be doing something new.
Marshall Goldsmith is encouraging people to ask themselves six questions every day. That’s the whole experiment.
Six questions. Asked at night. Answered honestly.
They all start the same way:
Did I do my best to…
The questions don’t ask what happened to me today. They ask what I did with today.
During his webinar introducing the experiment, Mr. Goldsmith referred to the Rigveda, an ancient poem from India that he described as being thousands of years old. He just mentioned it and moved on.
I had never heard of the Rigveda, so down the rabbit hole I went after his webinar ended.
The Rigveda is a collection of hymns. A lot of it is about everyday things. The sun rising. Fire. Breath. Life continuing. There’s a sense that daily life matters. That how we live each day counts.
People have been trying to figure out how to live a good life for a long time. Way before self-help and leadership books. Way before webinars and podcasts.
St. Ignatius of Loyola comes to mind. He developed something called the Daily Examen. It’s a review of the day. You look back. You notice where you were grateful. You notice where you fell short. You think about tomorrow.
Different times. Different traditions. Same basic ideas.
At the end of the day, pause and ask, “How did I live today?”
Goldsmith’s six questions fit right into that pattern.
Did I do my best to be happy today?
The question hits differently when the day is already over. I can see clearly whether I purposely enjoyed the day or just rushed through it.
Did I do my best to build positive relationships?
Now I’m thinking about the way I spoke to someone. Whether I listened. Whether I gave someone my full attention.
The questions are short. The reflections take some time.
Goldsmith describes happiness as “enjoyment with the process of life itself.” Happiness lives inside the day. It grows out of our engagement with what’s already in front of us.
The writers of the Rigveda seemed to understand that. Ignatius understood it too. They’re asking us to pay attention to our life and actively engage in it.
I’m only a few days into this experiment. Nothing dramatic has happened. No big breakthroughs.
But I know I’ll be answering these six questions later. I move through the day with more awareness. I catch myself sooner. I stay present a little longer. I think twice before reacting.
It’s a small shift…but small shifts repeated over time shape our lives.
Thousands of years have passed since the Rigveda was written. Centuries since Ignatius taught people to examine their day.
Our modern life looks very different, but the question remains the same.
How did I live today?
Here are Goldsmith’s six questions:
–Did I do my best to set clear goals today?
-Did I do my best to make progress towards my goals today?
-Did I do my best to find meaning today?
-Did I do my best to be happy today?
-Did I do my best to build positive relationships today?
Grandpa Bob Encouraging Leadership 
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