Here and now is all we’ve got.
Tomorrow is but a dream.
What you do here, today, and what you do now are the primary predictors of the future.
Status, condition, experience, meaning, feeling, and fulfillment are all whimsical byproducts of our push within now.
Here > There.
Now > Then.
My favorite thought from last year was in an article on Tony Hsieh’s thoughts on ‘accelerating serendipity’.
The last thing we want from our days is for them to be consistently similar.
In the end, our lives and our businesses are ideas about ideas and more often than not our new ideas come to us when our paths have hints of randomness and serendipity.
Read the random book.
Shake hands with the stranger.
Take the long route to work.
Listen to the weird tunes.
This is how one accelerates serendipity.
And then you will…
See what you never saw and hear what you never heard.
…present in the moments ahead.
…with this week.
…engaged with this year.
…inhabited in this experience.
Fully be here – right here.
Right now.
We miss the majority of what was meant for our soul’s consumption today when we’re fixated on ‘what’s next’.
In the words of Annie Dillard, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”
The short answer is no. You haven’t seen an instruction manual because there isn’t one.
Of course we don’t call it that though.
We call it college.
We call it the corporate ladder.
We call it schmoozing.
And now all of this isn’t making true on its promise to fulfill our dreams.
Here’s the catch: There isn’t a map for what you were sent here to do and there’s a reason something inside of you turns when you look out over an empty ocean.
Leave the shore. Sail your vessel. Return with your instruction manual.
May you feel the weight of destiny in each sunrise and experience the peace of pursued destiny with each sunset.
Be the bloom of what you’ve planted. Plant what you want to bloom.
May you taste your coffee and cherish your wine.
Don’t walk. Don’t run. Waltz with purpose.
Find metaphors. Live them. Give them.
Let the soul breathe and have its say.
More music. Less noise.
Happy New Year.
Ashton.Gustafson 