No one’s born so enlightened that she doesn’t have to spend a certain amount of time getting established.

And yet, as our culture recognizes and wrestles with the head starts that some of us are lucky enough to have, we sooner or later have to come up with some ideas about how it might be OK to use the head starts we have. Running backward doesn’t seem like a realistic or desirable option.

One option would be to look ahead and determine if the finish line we all think we’re striving for actually exists — or would be worth reaching.

Another would be to turn around and help others run as they wish.

A friend of mine recently suggested to me that the second option might really be an obligation, and I suspect he’s right. Luckily, there’s no need to wait for full enlightenment before turning on the lights for other people.

If you’re able to read this — in English, online — you’re probably lucky enough to be able to make someone else’s life a little easier. And you probably won’t have to look too hard to find an opportunity.

Intuition shouldn’t be the only field of knowledge we ever use. Systems and scientific methods can help us get more of the little things right over the long haul, and they’ll certainly save energy versus doing everything by impulse alone.

Still, intuition knows some big and important things, and it’s important to learn to listen to, trust, and respond to that voice when appropriate.

It often helps to set an intention first: once your subconscious starts looking for patterns and opportunities in a particular direction, it’s amazing how they’ll suddenly seem to appear in your conscious field of vision.

If you don’t like to close off options, it’s a good idea not to burn your bridges.

But it’s sometimes a good idea to burn your boats — or, if you can bear to stretch the metaphor that far, to dismantle them and build new bridges from the timbers.

You never know when or how someone else might help you get where you’re going. But you can sometimes help yourself get going when by letting go of attachment to the boat that’s brought you to where you are now.

We’re all constantly looking for these, yet we often don’t take adequate care to define these ideas that drive our lives.

In addition to being largely unexamined, the images we carry about what these mean are often not even our own. Perhaps they’re held over from a previous season of our lives. Or they’re little bits of someone else’s advice or interest that burrowed in especially deep.

It’s worth surfacing these ideas from time to time and really sitting with them. Are they still current? Are they attainable? If attained, will they prove satisfactory — or will we simply move the goalposts again?

We own our ideas, or they own us. A simple distinction, but not an easy one.

I’ve been listening to some podcasts with Richard Rohr lately, and one of the themes that frequently jumps out to me in his thinking is the idea of “magical transactions” and the damage they cause.

Many of Fr. Richard’s examples are focused on religious life such as the role of the clergy, prayer that’s premised on a literal interpretation of “ask and you shall receive,” or merely ritual piety.

But of course magical thinking is hardly limited to the way we approach the supernatural. How many of us expect that the things we buy, the votes we cast, or the degrees we receive will magically change our circumstances?

In all cases, the problem seems to be not so much over-expectation but giving over far too much of our own power and agency.

Once we give others the keys to our lives, there’s no guarantee we’ll like the direction they want to go with us.

I’ve been known to get pretty fired up about things that seem broken.

After patiently listening to me vent about one of these over the weekend, a friend had the wisdom to ask me, “What value of yours is this violating?”

It’s such a generous question: like Resistance, (righteous) indignation is often a really good clue to what really matters to us. When we react so strongly against something, we’re basing that on something else, and it’s worth calming down, turning around, and following the indignation back to its source.

(In this case, it’s about time-wasting, which I’ve begun to equate with stealing. When no one seems clear about what it’s for or why we should be here, we’re probably wasting time. And I’m in no hurry to give anyone permission to waste my time.)

If you’ve already made a huge investment, isn’t it worth paying the little bit extra to realize the value?

Nobody buys a sports car and then doesn’t fill the tank. Nobody buys a house and then doesn’t heat it.

We get nickel-and-dimed so often, and it’s easy to give in to resentment. An extra $50 just to bring a bag on this two-week trip halfway around the world? Really?!

Yes, it’s a gouge. But if buying the flight was worth it, bringing some clothes is probably worth it, too.

If you’ve already decided that famous degree is worth it, it’s best to budget as if you’re going to pay a little extra here and there to put it to work.

A sports car sitting in the driveway might look cool, but it’s not much fun if you can’t drive it. Ditto that diploma on the wall.

These are by far the most valuable resources we’ve got.

Yet we so often spend them so frivolously.

Worse, we spend others’ time and attention frivolously.

Friday afternoon, I sat through an hour and a half of presentations by my peers, during which not one student got to ask a question of another.

If it’s so important that everyone show up for each other, it’s worth making the experience worthwhile for everyone.

This one’s for people who live with voices and visions — people who know the special loneliness of living with something inside that’s struggling to be built or to be made better.

Bringing your dream into the world is tough enough. But bringing it to the world — putting it in front of the people who’ve been waiting for it to show up — is a whole other challenge.

It helps to understand something about sonder, which Seth Godin has been teaching about for the past couple of years.

Sonder is the second big shift. The first, as it was presented to me in college, is realizing that you have an interior life, and it matters. Sonder is when you realize that everyone else does, too.

The upshot of sonder — especially in a busy, rushing, overwhelmed world — is that you can only sell people the tip of the iceberg. Yes, the creation story of that thing you built matters, but it might not matter in exactly the way you’d like to think.

Most people aren’t looking to buy the sweat you put into the work.

So, when it’s time to ship, be proud of your sweat — then get out of your own way and package the product for the people you’re seeking to serve, not as a memorial to your effortful creative journey.

Distractions, screwups, and all manner of things that weren’t in the plan happen all the time.

The question isn’t whether they’re going to happen. They will.

The question is what to do next when they do.

How quickly, how compassionately, how courageously, can you begin again, or begin anew?