When choosing in our moment to moment, we need to choose one path out of all the possible paths. Why choose one path over the other?

My framework:

The closer the path takes you to your end destination, the more you can consider it the ‘right’ path. If there are multiple paths that end up at the same point, then it doesn’t matter which one you choose (unless you have destinations you want to visit along the way). If you can’t see where the path leads, then all you can focus on in the present moment is what you have visibility over and base your decision on that.

So you just need to decide on your end destination. Easy.

What’s the end destination? My take.

Look, I wanted to give the answer for life, but I don’t think I can give one. I’ve scratched my head over this but it’s a long-term question that I’m not going to be able to get a suitable answer for in a few days just to get a blog post out. There’s just seems to be too wide a variance in what people want out of life and consider valuable, and I need time to put together a convincing argument for my way of thinking, that I’m still working on.

Last night I asked two different people ‘between now and the end of your life, if you wanted to live a great life, what would you do to consider it great?’

One said: I would surround myself with people who make me happy.

The other said: Isn’t it all meaningless anyway, so why does it matter? (They also said there must be a little bit of meaning because otherwise why wouldn’t you just kill yourself? They also said maybe it is fulfilment that provides meaning. They said a lot).

All I’m going to say for now is that my end destination needs to be time-of-death proof. I could die in a month, or I could die in 50 years, but in either scenario I want to be able to say ‘from that point where I decided I was going to live with my end destination in mind, I lived that way’.

For me, I don’t have an end destination of singular achievement. Nothing I do in life (at this point in time looking forward) I want to define my life. I do want children, but if I die in a month then that just ain’t going to happen, so I don’t want to have that as my end destination. That’s not the case for everybody. And maybe it doesn’t even need to even be binary. Maybe I can set incremental goals: ‘dying at 40, doesn’t include climbing Everest, dying at 50, does include climbing Everest’.

Currently I’m in a whirl of thoughts, but I think I want my end destination to be a life of feeling complete, by which I mean having a sense of wholesome contentment and belonging, experiencing my life to the full, ideally feeling deep love in my heart for everything rather than hatred and pain, really feeling this is a gift, and living up to my expectations of how I want to conduct myself. That, all bundled into one. Given it is mostly about feelings that can come and go as they please beyond my control, all that is within my control is to bring the horses to water by what I do and how I do it, hoping the horse drinks and the feelings arise.

So what about you?

Side notes:

• It’s all very me, me, me, you may argue. Why should I focus on my end destination rather than on alleviating people suffering in other parts of the world? People even down the street? I think I would answer you have to start somewhere, and that first place is yourself, because no one else can do it for you.

• The way I can rationalise ‘why does it matter’ is the thought that life is just a series of present moments. If I’m in excruciating pain in the present moment, say in my abdomen, I can barely breathe with the pain it’s that all-consuming, and in this present moment, and in this present moment, and I have the option to not be in excruciating pain, then I would choose to not be in excruciating pain. Therefore it would matter to me that I’m not in pain. Therefore because something matters, it does matter, even if we’re only talking relatively, not absolutely.