Orientation, Not Resolution
On Not Knowing What Comes Next
In the air, thousands of miles above my eight-year-old head, an airline jet—no bigger than an ant—traversed the sky. I watched it for a few minutes, wondering who might be on board. Where they were going. What drew them skyward today.
When it disappeared, I looked down from where I sat on the red brick wall that lined our driveway. The driveway was empty except for one thing: a huge discarded refrigerator box, which my dad thought I might want before he got rid of it.
This was long before electronic gadgets—before electronic anything, really—aside from a calculator. And the most interesting thing about that was discovering how many bad words you could spell with numbers when you turned them upside down. But this cardboard box was special. Its sheer size alone conjured possibility.
With a little effort, it could become a rocket ship. Or that airplane I’d just watched disappear. Where would I go? I searched my imagination for the only places I really knew—straight out of National Geographic. Maybe the Amazon. But then I remembered the brightly colored tree frogs—adorable and deadly—and decided against the jungle.
The box could be a storefront for Kool-Aid sales. Or a clubhouse. Though try as I might, I suspected only one other person could fit inside with me. I was enjoying the process immensely.
Then I had an idea.
I hopped down from the wall, tipped the box upright, crawled underneath, and let its weight settle back onto the ground. I sat there in the dark, unconcerned by the summer heat that felt warmer inside despite the box creating its own shade.
And I stayed there. For how long, I can’t remember. Long enough that the cardboard smell became familiar. Long enough that my legs fell asleep. Long enough to cycle through a dozen possibilities—fortress, then submarine exploring the Mariana Trench.
The box hummed with potential. Every version of what it could become felt equally real, equally possible. I didn’t need to choose. The choosing, I was beginning to understand, would ruin it. Because once it became one thing, it could no longer be everything else.
So I just sat there. In the dark. Dreaming.
I often think about that afternoon. What did I ever decide to do with that box?
The truth is—I don’t think I ever did anything at all.
No grand conclusion. No finished product. Just me, sitting inside a box for quite a while, imagining everything it could become. And somehow, that was enough. The dreaming itself. The planning. The open-endedness. The refusal to collapse infinite possibilities into a single choice.
Fifty years later, I’m still sitting in cardboard boxes—metaphorical ones—imagining what they could become.
Another new year is just around the corner, and I keep circling the same questions: What will I do this year? What’s my focus? My theme? What should I be working toward?
Questions without clear answers can be exhausting.
So I went looking for inspiration—watching and reading historical commencement addresses from some of the brightest and most celebrated minds. I started with Emerson and ended with Steve Jobs, disappointed by more than a few. My expectations, it turned out, were set impossibly high.
But Jobs’ address stayed with me.
He talked about dropping out of college partly because he didn’t want to drain his parents’ finances. Then, for the next eighteen months, he simply followed his curiosity—dropping into classes that interested him. One of them was typography.
No grand plan. No logic tied to career outcomes. Just intuition. Just showing up to learn about something beautiful for no reason other than it called to him.
He learned about serif and sans-serif typefaces. About varying the space between letter combinations. About what makes great typography great. He described it as beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way science couldn’t capture.
None of it had any practical application to his life. At least not then.
Years later, he would credit that single class as foundational to the design of the Macintosh. “If I had never dropped in on that single course in college,” he said, “the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts.”
He couldn’t connect the dots looking forward. Only backward.
When I was in high school, I was convinced someone had made a mistake when they placed me in the gifted and talented program. I wasn’t exceptional—I was curious. But I went along with it.
On the first day, the teacher announced, “Learn what interests you.”
That was it.
Hands shot up. Where were the lectures? The tests? The grading criteria?
“No tests. No quizzes. No lectures,” she said patiently.
We were left to follow our own imaginations. That class became one of the most formative experiences of my life.
I became obsessed with handwriting analysis. Not because anyone suggested it. Not because it would lead anywhere. But because something about it sparked alive in me—the idea that personality could reveal itself in the loops and slants of our letters, that we leave traces of ourselves in everything we touch.
I left the school building one afternoon and drove straight to Fort Collins to interview a renowned graphologist. I filled notebooks. I practiced. I studied loops, pressure, and baseline slant until I could glance at someone’s signature and see their whole world.
Did it become my career? No. But it taught me to trust the pull of curiosity even when it seems impractical. Especially then.
People once asked Elon Musk, incredulously, “How did you know how to build a rocket?”
His answer was simple: “I read books.”
This is learning without borders.
Finding our life’s purpose—or even just the purpose of the next year, the next season, or the next day—often comes down to trusting ourselves to know what to do next. That knowing doesn’t come from logic alone. It’s born from emotion. From listening to the body. From paying attention to what stirs the heart.
Whatever I’m doing, I’ve learned to do it with intention. To give it my best. Maybe to finish. Maybe not. To know when to pivot.
This applies to books. Projects. Careers.
The compass I follow is my own true north—my longings, my curiosities, the sparks that invite me toward something new and perhaps a little foolish.
When we are actively participating, we are learning. From mistakes. From small wins. From however we choose to define success. And if we are learning, we are growing—into a purpose that was already planted within us.
Growth feels especially important now. Not slowing down as I approach sixty. Not quietly expiring like a brown-spotted banana with a limited shelf life.
Learning is fertilizer for the soul. I learn best when I’m creating something—anything—as long as it matters to me.
Most learning is free. It’s as individual as a fingerprint. There is no single template. No instruction manual. It’s free-solo climbing—like Alex Honnold scaling El Capitan without ropes. Some lessons come at a cost, and we learn the hard way, sometimes many times over. But when we want something enough, the effort it takes makes the reward that much sweeter.
You don’t always need a certificate or a degree to be credible. A piece of paper. The same kind that says you’re married or that you were born. Useful, yes—but not the whole story.
Real power doesn’t come from control over others—from gatekeeping with credentials. It comes from knowledge. From a brain that keeps changing, expanding, and reaching beyond what we once thought possible.
So here are my ingredients for the best new year of your life: Curiosity. Imagination. And the willingness to show up exactly where you are and grow from there.
Raise your champagne glass with me. Lift your chin.
To growth. To learning. To creation. And to all that matters.
Find your cardboard box. Sit in it awhile. See what it could become.
That’s enough for now.
That might be everything.