The idea of self-authorship and the discovery of one's own unique trajectory is rarely straightforward.
Generally, we default to framing these decisions as a fork in the road and somehow a choice between two mutually exclusive futures, say stay here or go there.
But I think for the most part this binary is a construct, or rather a more convenient fiction that simplifies the wondrous, messy reality of a life being lived.
I keep coming back to the idea that most meaningful trajectories emerge from synthesis rather than selection. We don't simply choose one path and abandon the other, instead we take elements from different possibilities, testing and adjusting as we go.
Perhaps it's about blending them into a trajectory that is uniquely one's own, which happens more so gradually and in a self-deterministic fashion as opposed to a one-shot dramatic forced leap.
At least for me, sustained understanding of the consequences of my own actions comes from the former, good or bad, and then there's a realization also of what's realistically possible or not. Small steps reveal much more than grand visions could.
Symbol upon symbols
Yet, even as we seek to author our own lives, we find a silent, uninvited guest at the table of every major decision, which in this case here is the expectations of others.
For example, having a "good salary" is a social symbol and a badge of success validated by some entities of our circle, and not merely a financial metric in a practical sense of the word. The number itself matters less than what others think it means.
Now, to bring about a change in perception requires first acknowledging that we're operating within inherited frameworks of success.
I think the main obstacle of sorts to face is an "emotional failure" of not living up to a standard that was set for us, not by us.
At a zoom out timeframe, this doesn't mean much. It's a blip in the ocean of emotions we go through.
But at that very moment, it could be the whole ocean and we end up drowning, so to speak, before learning to swim in waters we've chosen for ourselves.
I think again that coming to wonder about who actually set these benchmarks, and why we internalized them, can be transformative.
And then you get hit with this realization that freedom in this context is basically to dismantle the external scales of judgment and to embrace the glorious, terrifying possibility of a life that looks exactly like the one we dreamed up for ourselves.
The aha moment comes almost suddenly and you're left with figuring out how to extract an intangible seed to plant it tangibly.
How do you take a feeling of liberation and build a life from it? Coming with an answer for that is usually where the real work begins.
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