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.

It’s easier to rule things out than to pick them in. For instance, I never learned how to win; I learned how not to lose. 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 found that none other than Jacobi himself found it to be an effective way to navigate life.

You’ll feel down, which is normal when you demand more from yourself. The trick isn’t ignoring the feeling, but rather coding while sad, writing while anxious, and creating while uncertain. Each emotional state you push through becomes another tool in your arsenal.

I read biographies when I’m down, and I still do, as there’s something about seeing someone else’s map through the chaos. It’s not to follow it, because you probably can’t—their Greatest couldn’t be planned, and neither can yours—but it helps to know others navigated their own storms.

Operating locally under constraints is the essence of Waking Life. While the vision gives you a destination, the path itself is all local optimization. Bezos understood this when he said:

“Complaining is not a strategy. You have to work with the world as you find it, not as you would have it be.”

You’ll learn what sacrifice truly means, not the Instagram-friendly version, but the raw wound of saying NO to good things.

Retrospectively, everything makes sense, and that’s the 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 Survivor’s bias of the soul.

I find myself constantly mapping things: connections between domains and 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.”

The beauty is in the synthesis, in the spaces between disciplines, and in the gaps where new understanding hides. Your Ikigai isn’t a destination; rather, it’s the art of not getting lost while going somewhere you’ve never been. Ultimately, it’s about building a compass, not following a map.