The “where could this lead me?” question

How wise is it to call something good and wonderful without looking into the future and asking, “where could it lead me?”

Not too wise. And yet we do it all the time.

When someone earns more, he feels that it’s a good thing. When someone enjoys life more, he feels that it’s a good thing. When someone buys a new car, he feels that it’s a good thing. Et cetera.

But what is that which we catalog as being good? It is our perceived experience of a single moment belonging to a stretch. And more often than not, we ignore the fact that we are not living in that single moment, but in the stretch. And so it means that we get caught up in the smallest of the details; most of the time.

There is a little Zen story that I’d like to share with you on this topic. I don’t know how it is called or where I have heard of it, but it goes like this.

There was a little boy. And this boy, at his 14th birthday, gets a horse. And everybody in the village says, “how wonderful, the boy got a horse!” The Zen master says, “we’ll see.”

Two years later, the boy falls off the horse, breaks his leg and the whole village says, “how terrible!” The Zen master says, “we’ll see.”

Then a war breaks out and all the young men have to go out and fight, except that this boy can’t, because his leg is all messed up, so now everybody in the village says, “how wonderful!”

…You know what the Zen master said.

What I want you, the reader, to get out of this, is that the worth of a moment is not determined by a moment, but by the stretch to which all moments belong. It is the perspective of the stretch of our existence, the past, the present and the future, that determines a moment’s worth.

A simple analogy is this. If you have a car, do you rate it as a good car or as a bad car based on how it behaves at a certain specific moment? Or do you drive it for a while and then form your opinion?

In our daily lives we mostly choose the first option. We rate anything as soon as it gets to us. We put the “good” or the “bad” stamp on it and that’s that; we’re probably not going to change it until it bites or pleasantly surprises us.

They say that ignorance is dangerous. But they are wrong. Ignorance is not dangerous; what is dangerous is the illusion of knowledge. You see, ignorance leaves room for improvement; one could become less ignorant. But if one has the illusion of knowledge, what does one stand to learn? “I know that, therefore I don’t need to learn it.” Which is relevant because we have the illusion of asking ourselves, “where could this lead me?” all the time; but we don’t.

If you start asking yourself the “where could this lead me?” question, three things might happen:

1. You might have a better life. Not only from a middle-class perspective (house, car, money, etc), but also from a higher one. For example, you might be able to avoid getting in a situation in which you could hurt other people or your loved ones (not necessarily in a physical manner). You might be able to avoid believing in false concepts, because you’ll see where they might lead you. You may get closer to self-actualization. And so on.
2. You might be better at passing through life’s obstacles. When you see there’s a river ahead of you, you can build a bridge; if you don’t see the river, you’ll probably drown in it.
3. Both of the above.

Before going to a rock concert, or believing in some false concept floating around out there, or desiring a better job or a bigger house, ask yourself where could those things lead you. And think hard about it. Then think hard about where your current position is taking you. After you’ve thought hard about those things, collect the data, interpret it, and make a move. It will be a good move.

Photo by: faisalee