Roughly eight years ago, I wrote a letter to a close friend complaining about the amount of time it takes to grow old and sit back to enjoy all the nonsense a person has to live through, should he live long enough to look back upon his life. I was complaining about always wanting to get to the next stage in my life so I could get to the next step beyond that. I told her, “I’m always doing what’s needed to get to the next place in my life, so I can get to the next step and start working toward the place after that. I just don’t get it. So I want to hurry up and grow old so I can be done with it all.” (Silliness, I know.) The whole process of _achieving this so I could work toward that_ seemed absurd, whatever _that_ might actually be when it arrived. Why couldn’t I just enjoy what I was going through and not worry about whatever was supposed to happen after? I didn’t have a name for this, nor did I think too much about what the idea meant. I only knew that it had been driving me crazy for years and finally I had to tell someone. So I did.

All these years later, last week, I come across the post Not Being a Real Person: The #1 Self-Development Anti-Hack by Clay Collins over at The Growing Life . Clay, in his first four bullet points, managed to sum up everything I was trying to say many years ago, and he did a much better job of delivering the message altogether, coining the term “stepping stone lives” to describe what I was trying to convey. He says, “We spend the majority of our waking hours working for goals that are merely stepping stones to other goals.” He goes on to say all sorts of things about being a real or an unreal person, but you can read his article for those details. You don’t need me to re-write the entire thing for you.

I hadn’t given much thought to my idea since I’d written my letter all those years ago until reading Clay’s post, which prompted me again to start examining the life of stone-stepping. If you step not from stone to stone, how do you get from there to here? Do you hop randomly to whichever stone is nearest? Or most convenient?  Without giving away too much, I never wanted to be a real person.  At least not once I’d decided that most of what other people do is mostly for what I consider to be ridiculous reasons.  At the same time, I don’t think it’s possible to avoid living a stepping stone life.

Sure, it can get pretty boring and a person can feel very trapped living a so-called stepping stone life, but no one can live a life that involves no stepping. You’re always going, moving, growing. You step with your family. You step with your friends. You step alone. You step out. You step in life. You step in shit. You get the idea.  And you get to decide whether you step to the tune of what the rest of the world around you is doing, or whether you step to the tune that’s playing in your head.  (Assuming you have a tune in your head, and it’s different from what’s being pushed through, or down, your throat.)

I stated back then in my letter that I wasn’t going to do it anymore (work for the thing beyond the thing that’s supposed to be next just so I can look back at it), and I would go with the flow – but apparently not till after I finished college, which was a real process for me and another stepping stone – whatever it may have turned to.  It’s turned to this.  Me sitting here writing to you about a letter I wrote many many moons ago.

Walking The Path That Is Your Life was first posted to justinll.com on July 9, 2008.