Do you ever find yourself feeling swamped and overwhelmed by the sheer volume and pace of your work, life and problems? Stuck in a job and work cycle, unhappy but unsure how to break out of it? Most people do, at some point in their career, but having the courage to do something about it is not easy.

I’d like to share something I wrote several years ago, and which was my catalyst for making a big, and much needed, change at the time. In the years since, I have revisited this philosophy time and again, sometimes for personal and sometimes for professional changes, often to help others clarify their own thinking. It has never failed to keep me moving forward.

Stepping stones

In the universal scale of things, we are an insignificant pinprick in an infinite pincushion of stars and suns and galaxies – a dust-speck on the canvas of the cosmos. Perhaps its magnitude is too great to comprehend. Perhaps we just have not given ourselves the time and opportunity to think about it. Either way, it is all too easy to spend our lives looking inwards, and not to see or experience the wonders that lie beyond.

The innocent optimism, ideals and convictions of our youthful beginnings quickly dissolve into the myopic saturation of the minutiae that surrounds and consumes us. The issues we deem most important are simply those we see immediately before our noses – the more we anguish over them the more inflated they become, until suddenly they have filled our eyeline entirely and blotted out the last peripheries of our vision where dreams and hopes are cached. When viewed from close enough, even a dust speck can appear insurmountably large. As we focus inwards into our own ever decreasing circles, as we immerse ourselves further and further in the ever-accelerating centrifuge of our breakneck techno-world, as we drop the stick shift a split second earlier each day to maximize the revs and urge our human engines that little bit quicker into the next concentric spiral, it is all too easy to lose perspective on life outside the circle.

We can choose to spiral our lives into meltdown, or else we can choose to step sideways, to propel ourselves onto one of the myriad tangential opportunities that present themselves daily, if only we allowed ourselves to look up long enough to see them.

Our life journeys liken to stepping stones, we can elect to carefully pick out small steps across the smooth flowing waters, or for ginger stretches across rapid moving white water, sometimes taking the safe and clear route ahead, perhaps sometimes needing to take a leap of faith from one slippery place to another.

If we choose to stick to the safety of the riverbank we will never find out what may lie on the other side. To sit forever by the side of stagnant water is to invite the slow permeation of its taste and odour.

There is no shame in regretting things you have done, for this is part of living. The biggest tragedy is to reach old age and regret what might have been. There is a big, big world out there, waiting to be explored.

All journeys begin with a single step.

So, take the step. Large or small, take the step.

Who knows which stepping stone this will lead you to next, which pathway you will pick out – it really does not matter. Just close your eyes, stretch out your toes, step out into the unknown and enjoy where the journey takes you.

Paul Haggath