Finding your North

Written on 28th May 2026 at Mumbai

Some days I get scared because I don't know exactly where I'm heading in life. I've accomplished a few goals, but the bigger picture seems vague. Does everyone who's building something new go through this phase? Do we really need to know where we're headed? I mean, I don't have a map. Actually, we don't need the map, we have the compass.

It's scary because I don't have the map, but I have my north, and I have the compass.

Maps are for terrain that has already been explored by someone else, but what if you're going somewhere no one has been? If you're building a unique life as a teacher-businessman-artist, a map is useless anyway.

Steve Jobs said in his Stanford speech that you can only connect the dots looking backward, never forward. The people who look sure in hindsight were usually guessing at the time, and the clear big picture gets drawn after the journey.

Do we really need to know where we're headed? You need a direction, not a destination. A destination is a point on a map, and you don't have a map. A direction is your north, and it's enough to decide the next step.