I recently read The Lion Tracker’s Guide to Life by Boyd Varty.
Trackers find a first track that piques their interest and follow it until they can’t anymore.
Sometimes they lose the track, or the track simply stops. When that happens, they find another first track and follow that one until they can’t anymore.
They don’t know where they are headed. They don’t know where the lion is or where they’ll end up, but they know exactly how to get to where they’re going-–follow the track in front of them until they can’t anymore. When they can’t anymore, their interest leads them to another track to follow.
Isn’t this all we’re ever doing?
We follow a track based on desire or what makes sense, then we lose the track, usually feel a bit lost and uncertain, and then another track appears.
At a particular point in my life, I constantly heard questions like, “Where do you see yourself in 6 months?” “What do you want your life to look like in 10 years?”
I never had any clue. I still have absolutely no clue. I don’t have a vision of myself in some specified time in the future, at least not one that occurs to me to move toward. It feels more like I just follow the fresh track that’s right in front of me.
I used to think there was something wrong with me for not having a vision the way others seemed to. Now I know it’s not a problem, I’m just doing it the lion tracker’s way.
Maybe you are too? Life lives us in this way, in real time.
We don’t know where we’re going, and we don’t need to. But we know how to get there.
