What Moves You?: On Direction, Orientation, and Being without Limit

Where are you going?

Seriously. Right now, where are you going?

Even sitting still, we are all heading somewhere. It is important to be reflective about where that "somewhere" is and why it is our goal.

Think of it this way, if you don't know where you are trying to go, it is impossible to know if you have arrived.

Always seeking, never finding.

Always moving, never resting.

Being lost is rarely a goal worth pursuing. But, being willing to get lost in the name of being open to the surprise of the journey is a risk worth taking.

C.S. Lewis once said that sometimes the best way to recover from being lost is backtracking to where you last knew where you were. His point here is worth taking seriously: In order to know where we are going, it is crucial to know where we are.

This might seem trivial (like something written on a fraternity party t-shirt): "Wherever you go, there you are!" Ugh. I get it, philosophers can often make the very simple seem very difficult. But, sometimes trivial things hide extremely profound matters of human existence. In this case, unless we realize where we are, it is impossible to give good directions for where we are trying to go.

Think about it: How do you get to Vancouver? Do you travel east or west? Do you go north or south? Do you take a bus or a plane? None of these questions are answerable without beginning with some information about our starting point.

Too often, I believe, motivational speakers and leadership experts or, God-help us all, "influencers" (as if there genuinely were people who were not influential in the lives of other people; to exist as a person is to be relationally connected such that we are always influential and influenced . . . but that is a topic for a different future article) tend to stress the importance of direction without stopping to think carefully and critically about the self-assessment required prior to any account of directionality being given.

Look, I get it. It makes sense.

Talking about where you are is boring. Talking about where you are going is invigorating. Yet, talking about where you are going without talking about where you are is never actually to say anything at all!

So, where are we? It all depends on what you think is worth noticing.

Your location depends on what aspects of it you find meaningful.

Are you 2,500 miles from Vancouver? Or are you in a beautiful park right near the ice cream stand. Both might be true, but if you are doing everything you can to get to Vancouver, you are probably not paying attention to the park, but merely the miles left to cover. In such a mindset, the ice cream stand is merely a distraction and perhaps, due to the crowd around it, even an obstacle, rather than an opportunity for nourishment and joy. It is easy to become so obsessed with where we are going that we never stop to ask whether it is the best place to go.

Simply put, when we are obsessed with outcomes, we can fail to remain open to being surprised by other possibilities.

Alternatively, if you are still directed toward Vancouver, but with the ability to be surprised and appropriately distracted by beauty, by ice cream, you can continue in the right direction, but without missing that there are other places you could choose, instead, to go. Maybe ice cream in the park is exactly what you need to restore your energy for the trip.

My thought is this, we can only move in the right direction when we are (1) aware of where we are and (2) aware of how we are oriented.

Let's phrase these two components a bit more philosophically as questions:

• (1) Who are you?
• (2) What do you hope for?

When we allow ourselves to ask these questions we can slow down enough to realize that we might be running in a direction that is disconnected from our identity and who we want to become.

Accordingly, I think that we would do well to rethink direction, in business as in life more broadly, as less an issue of goal obtainment (40 under 40, Forbes top 100, "most influential" lists), and more a matter of being properly oriented such that our identity lines up with our hopes.

I love the line by Tennyson in "Ulysses" where he says that his "purpose holds to sail beyond the sunset." Notice that he orients himself such that he can make sense of his direction in relation to where he is now. His hope is not simply to get to that distant shore, but to continue to sail toward what matters - indeed, he names it as his "purpose."

His identity, here and now, is defined by a hope that is not limited by what he can see from where he is. He is willing to get lost.

Too often we are defined by the wants that we can see - usually understood as the things that others have!

As such, I think that we need to stop limiting ourselves by confusing direction with orientation.

Direction is something that is finished when we get where we are going, and something that changes once we reach our destination. For example, when we get to Vancouver, we might then need to figure out where the best ice cream shop is in the city.

Orientation is something that not only stands in front of us, but is something that undergirds us as we make sense of ourselves. It is because of being properly oriented that I am able to notice things here and now differently.

• Direction merely names the object of our action.
• Orientation names our hope insofar as it shapes our identity.

Direction is important, but we should remember that direction does not dictate us, but rather that we dictate it . . . relative to our orientation.

Whereas direction answers questions, orientation motivates us to ask the questions in the first place.

Be someone who might eventually get to Vancouver, but is not disoriented if the direction ends up changing unexpectedly.

So, maybe the question is not: Where are you going? But instead: What moves you?

• Are you simply trying to go somewhere else?
• Or are you moved to continue sailing beyond the sunset?

Spend some time today thinking about your identity and your orientation. In other words, pay attention to the ice cream stands you might otherwise have ignored. It may be that Vancouver has the best ice cream and worth passing up the cheap ice cream on the interstate. It also may be that Vancouver isn't worth visiting in the first place.

So, today, be moved.

Be willing to be surprised.

But, most importantly be . . . on purpose . . . without limit . . .