Orientation

No, I don’t mean running in the forest with a map and a compass, even though that’s not completely unrelated either. To find the place marked with X it helps to know where you are going, where you are now, and where you are coming from. We have seen this pattern already in starting to learn a new subject and in planning your life. Generally, it comes up whenever you do any goal oriented activity. Where am I right now? How did I end up here? Where was I the last time I checked? Where do I want to go? How am I going to get there? This is the first thing we all do in the morning, even if we are not always that conscious about it. We do this whenever we continue anything that was left unfinished.

How much should you spend time thinking of the past, present and the future then? Sometimes you don’t need to know much at all about your past or even about the present. You are swimming on a beach. You know you want to swim back to the shore you see in front you. You don’t need to know exactly how far is it or what was your exact swimming path so far. You just need to keep your focus on the shore and swim until you get there.

The other extreme is a labyrinth. You know you want to get to the other side of it, but knowing that doesn’t help you much. What helps is to know exactly what path you’ve taken so far, which direction you are heading at the moment and what your options are. This is like knowing exactly what you want but having know idea where to find it. You might bump into it by chance, of course. If you are not that lucky, however, you’ll have to figure it out by learning where it’s not.

So, where was I? Oh yes, I was explaining about the concept of orientation and trying to make the point that it is a recurring activity pattern that is useful to be aware of.