Vision isn’t a straight line. Instead, it’s more like water finding its path downhill; the principle of least action. You don’t plan the route, for you just know the destination is inevitable.

There’s this concept I keep circling back to, almost like a yearly pilgrimage of thought: Ikigai. After years, the secret—my secret, perhaps—seems to be knowing what you don’t want.

You’ll sometimes feel down, which is quite normal if you demand more from yourself. The trick is to not ignore the feeling, but to code while sad, write while anxious, and create while uncertain. Each emotional state you push through becomes another tool in your arsenal.

For instance, I read biographies when I felt blue; I still do. There’s something about seeing someone else’s map through the chaos. Not to follow it, because you probably can’t—their Greatness cannot be planned, and neither can yours—but I find it helpful to know how others have navigated their own storms. If you’re lucky, you might also learn what sacrifice truly means; not the social media friendly version, but the raw wound of saying NO to good things.

It’s easier to rule things out than to pick them in. For instance, I never figured out how to be happy, but just learned how not to be miserable. This path of negation is sharper, clearer, and more decisive, and I’ve recently discovered that none other than Jacobi himself considered it to be an effective way to navigate life.

Retrospectively, everything makes sense, and that’s a very nasty trap. You can’t plan the perfect route forward, yet looking back, it seems like the only way things could have happened—a kind of survivorship’s bias of the soul.

I find myself constantly mapping things: connections between domains, hunting for patterns in chaos. Maybe that’s what we’re all doing, being cartographers of meaning in our own ways. Some map in code, some in silence, and others in music, much like this reflection, which is part Hypno5e’s Man Ray sample and part midnight musings with one of my closest friends:

“An object is the result of looking at something which itself has no quality or charm. One would look at something or maybe pick something which has no intrinsic meaning at all. One may disregard completely the aesthetic quality of the object or even the craftsmanship. The filters of perspectives shed nuance on whatever is the supposedly designated meaning involved. You see, the world is full of wonderful craftsmen, however, there are very few practical dreamers. One would have to either go outwards, leaving any contour of the scape one is in, far, far away, or simply free fall in the smallest shred of texture in order to fully relish in the unwavering glory of this perceptual simulacrum. Maybe a craftsman should embrace the dream or the dreamer should craft.”

Lastly, while vision allows for some sense of destination, the path itself is all local optimization. I’m more and more coerced by forces beyond my control that operating locally under constraints is the essence of waking life.

The resplendence lies in the spaces between disciplines, right now. Don’t treat your Ikigai as a destination, regardless of how it feels. Think more about learning the art of not getting lost while going somewhere you’ve never been; think about building a compass, not following a map.