Discovery In Progress

Alan Watts, in one of his many profound lectures, famously fleshed out the cliche phrase 'Life is about the journey, not the destination.' He drew the analogy of music as part of his thesis. "You don't work the piano," he said, "you play the piano." When you listen to a beautiful piece of music, you don't skip to the end, or anticipate the final note, but instead, you enjoy the verses, the chorus, the bridge, and the final notes. We should adopt the same mentality when it comes to our lives, he surmised.

The greatest authors, the ones with truly captivating abilities, practice this phenomena in their work. Non fiction and fiction alike, act in the same manner as a work of music. The best reads are dynamic, unpredictable, complex, and sometimes partially left unresolved. An author, for example, such as Jordan Peterson, attempting to disseminate the psychological significance of biblical stories while maintaining a partial stance towards literary interpretation rather than spiritual conclusion, begins a conversation, with himself, with no clear resolution or ending. The dialogue, between his many internal vantages, will end up where it ends. The conclusion isn't as important as the process of searching for the truth. When you sit down to hear one of his lectures, you know you're about to be taken along on an intellectual journey, and you're simultaneously aware of the fact that neither he, nor you, know where it'll end up, what side tracks it will embark on along the way, or how long it will take. 

Not surprisingly, this mentality on our life isn't natural given on our biological confines. We seek to satisfy immediate needs, to constantly ensure our survival, which in fact we audit through various feedback mechanisms called happiness, comfort-ability, and their antonyms sadness and stress. Duly so, we must also recognize that we are uniquely separated from our nearest biological ancestors by one key ability - the power to envision a branch of futures, decide which future we wish to manifest, and then act in the appropriate manner as to achieve that future. This requires that we hypothesize, formulate, and choose - Free Will, the age old argument. 

Putting the Free Will discussion aside it is important to draw back to this idea of discovery in progress, rather than discovery in finality. This is not to say that there is NO discovery in finality. Given the nature of finality, deriving from the word finite, we can postulate that if the finite nature of life gives meaning to life, just as scarcity of time gives value to time in a monetary sense, then the finality of a journey gives meaning to the discovery along the way. In other words, if discovery is quantified in units, then those units can be metaphorically analogized to being tied up in stock options, or to being quanta of potential energy in Physics terminology, throughout the duration of the journey, and with the arrival of the finality, the units are liquidated, the potential energy converted to actionable kinetic energy. The discovery reaches its terminal point and the cycle is made complete. 

The takeaway from this is that life is both about the journey and the destination. The destination gives meaning to the journey while the journey gives body to the work of music that is our life. It's important to have a plan. One that is dynamic, lengthy, and meaningful. And it's equally important to recognize where that journey will take you - to a place that's unpredictable and unknown. But through these parameters, we can better identify and seek out what we feel is important in the time we're given.