So many people looking for new work these days. Not only because their position was economically eliminated, but also early-life or mid-life change, or a lack of satisfaction or fulfillment that has crept in over time. On a long mountain hike this past weekend, two of our companions spoke of their desire to move out of their current employment, and into something… new. Something better, and not only in terms of dollars, but mostly in terms of feeling fulfilled.

The problem for each was not in the implementation, but in the search. What to do now? More of the same work, but for a different employer? Go to the job boards? Monster-dot-com? It is a daunting proposal to throw yourself far ahead, where your skills are just what they must be, the market is what it must be, and an employer has materialized looking for you. It is natural to mix the imagined future with the steps required to get there, and to confuse the few feet of trail ahead of you with the mountaintop that is hours of moderate labor away.

The next step in one’s life… any, every step… is never further than a single step away. The mind starts looking, starts casting about for far distant futures, and chasing after those futures. It’s important to have a vision. It is important to know which part of the horizon you are walking toward: where your sun is brighter, where your weather is better. It is important to know this, to have a vision; but it is vital to have an understanding that the next step is only one step away. Therefore it is very close to you. It is not at a place you can never attain, it is never at an intangible, superhuman distance: it is always just one step away, a step that will only be as large as your pace. Therefore, to look far is to miss your footing. It is to fall or to fail, or to miss the trail altogether… because you are looking so far away, and have no sense of where you stand. You are looking so far away for love, for accomplishment, to fill empty desires, when all love, all success, all satisfaction is within an arm’s length, all the time.