Stepping Out

You have to get out into the world a bit. 

Stretch, scratch at the walls,peel at the paper, poke your finger through the cracks.

And you have to keep getting out there.

You have to keep stepping on. 

Stepping up. 

Stepping out.

Our basic childhood training for this is usually (in the West at least) a set of "off-the-shelf" goals - passing exams, getting your fire-lighting badge, surviving a questionable piece of casting in the school nativity play … whatever. Not everybody can carry it off but when you've played the Mother of the Saviour of the human race in a all-boys school… well…everything else is a sideways step.

But these goals are just warmups to get used to the idea of the beginning, middle and end.

And eventually those goals are complete. Or at the very least, in the past. Either way they are over.

Of course you can continue in the same vein.

More exams, more certificates.

You can find new goals to tackle in the same way.

Or new goals to tackle in a new way.

And that new way can be one that somebody else has already invented or an iteration that you innovate yourself.

That's your job.

That's it.

To find what motivates you, and use your techniques of learning to survive. Finding teachers when you need them and guiding teachers when they come up short.

And while you are doing that, you can use it to get out into the world and make sure the world doesn't close in on you.