Where Have You Come From, and Where Are You Going?

There is a truth behind my writing that covers more than one subject. Sometimes it leans into martial arts or the forge or life on the road or whatever spiritual language people use to make sense of things. Some folks call it theology or philosophy or religion or psychology. Others call it intuition or conscience or culture. To me they are different vantage points of the same mountain. Different lenses pointed at the same questions. What is a good life? What is the truth? How do we carry responsibility without breaking? So when I write it is not from authority or education or as a polished professional. It is from lived experience shaped by martial arts, scripture, stoicism, silence and the forge. If there is a purpose to any of this it is to try and put words around the things that already exist in us before the words arrive.

There is an old question that goes back as far as scripture and maybe even further than that. Where have you come from? And where are you going? It sounds simple when you first hear it but the longer you sit with it the deeper it sinks.

I have been thinking lately that maybe a lot of our struggles today come from not really knowing how to answer either part.

Because if we are honest as a society and even as individuals we do not seem to have a shared understanding of where we came from. Not spiritually. Not historically. Not cosmically. We have got a thousand competing creation stories and ancient civilization theories and more modern disagreements than you could count. It is hard to root yourself in something when every root seems tangled or disputed. And without roots it is hard to grow upward.

Then there is the other side. Where are we going?

It is a fair question when you look at the state of the world. Wars are still happening. Factions pulling against each other. Technology is moving ahead like a runaway train with no one sure where it is meant to stop. And here we are just trying to get by. Trying to find orientation in all of it. It feels like if you do not have a direction you will end up floating. Maybe that is why so many people today are anxious or numb or chasing something just to feel alive.

It reminds me of a thought I had the other day about how infinite possibility can actually leave you lost. Online there is a whole meme culture that writes thousands of haikus about spam. Literally just spam. And it keeps growing. Endless creativity inside this tiny boxed topic. There is something strange and almost beautiful about that because it seems to say that without some boundary or direction we might never create anything at all. We need limits. We need a container to pour ourselves into.

It got me thinking about Peter Pan too. He has infinite potential. He never ages. Never settle. Always free. But what does he really have? He is the king of the Lost Boys and still lost himself. Wendy on the other hand chooses a path. She gives up some possibilities to live a life with meaning. And that seems to matter. Because potential is only a nice idea until it is shaped into something real. Otherwise it stays hollow.

Sometimes I wonder if all this speed and choice and information we have now, especially with AI and everything else, is just making the darkness bigger and the map blurrier. We are not short on options. We are short on orientation.

I do not pretend to have answers for any of this. Not for you and not for myself most days. But maybe the best we can do is pick something good and honest and walk toward it. It does not have to be big. It does not have to be certain. It just needs to be aimed.

So I do not know where you are at as you read this. But if you are feeling a little lost it might be worth asking those two old questions again.

Where have you come from?

And where are you going?

And if you do not know yet that is alright too. Maybe it is enough to admit that the questions matter.