Years ago, all through my later teens and well into my twenties, I’d occasionally have an odd feeling or impulse come bobbing up into my awareness. I’d be busy doing something else entirely, and then, for no particular reason, I’d have the urgent, hungry thought come pushing into my mind: “I want…. I WANT….” but it would just hang there, unfinished.

I could never figure out what I was wanting. Over the period of ten years or more, that thought kept returning, catching me at random times.

And then one day the thought came again. “I want… I WANT….” and as always I asked “what? What is it I want?”

But this time, somewhere in the still reaches of my mind – a place I seldom went in those days – a quiet little answer floated up.

“Action… progress toward a goal.”

This was so unexpected and so simplistic sounding, that I nearly dismissed it. I asked myself, “Can that really be it?” I turned it over and over, feeling the heft of it in my mind, the timbre and texture of it. And finally I decided that, well yeah, maybe it’s too simple, but I think that’s really it. That’s what I’ve been wanting all this time.

In the years since then, anytime I’ve ever felt frustrated or lost, unfulfilled or impatient, I could go back to that simple answer (action… progress toward a goal) and find that a failure to satisfy this simple need was causing my frustration or my impatience. Then, as soon as I got myself a direction and jumped (or eased) back into action again, I’d find myself centered and satisfied once more.

So if you sometimes feel lost and uncertain, unsure of what’s going on in your life, I offer you the answer that has served me so well for all these years. Of course, it probably sounds too simple, but here it is anyway. Use it wisely.

“Action… progress toward a goal.”

Cheers from warm and smiling Thailand,
Charles