Moving closer to the right direction

I define my goal in this short or long life, the direction I want to move closer to every day, thinking mostly about the present and the future.

"The goal is to maximise what you can potentially get from life, considering the present and the entire course of your life, regardless of how much time you have left, and properly accounting for every parameter: where you come from; what is hidden, uncertain, and beyond our control and understanding; and what we can potentially comprehend, understand, and even control to determine the trajectory of our destiny and our passage through this reality: chance, uncertainty, evident and hidden truths, and the unknown component that determines your potential."

Many call it happiness; many call it serenity and inner peace, considering that happiness and serenity would not exist without difficulties and challenges of any kind in life.

How this translates into each person's life is for each of us to discover, adjusting our course when necessary. No one can discover it for us, for better or worse.

One of the first thoughts that struck me deeply at university, during an astrophysics course, was realising how vast the universe was and how small the probability was that I, today, would find myself here, conscious, writing on this blog.¹

Let us simply become aware that life is unique and that this, together with our biological survival instinct, drives us to want to live as long as possible. We may therefore as well try to live it to the best of our potential, seeking to maximise satisfaction, peace, fulfilment, happiness, or whatever you want to call it, whatever our age or wherever we are.

Imagine that in front of each of us there is an optimal path which, precisely because of its intrinsic complexity, we cannot uncover, but which exists. We cannot uncover and follow it, but we have all the means to try to move closer to it every day.

And one thing I, too, have realised is that writing helps with this purpose. It helps us think, it helps us reflect, it helps us make decisions. I find a certain peace in putting some thoughts down in black and white, as if at times there were too much entropy, too much fog and confusion in my mind, and bringing everything out and making a thought concrete could somehow bring back clear skies.

What I write naturally applies to me: life is a complex system, made up of general principles that do not change over time, but also of many variables that depend on the era, the place, who we are, and who shares it with us. Yet I have always benefited greatly from the experiences of those who chose to recount them honestly. It was the books, reflections, and experiences of certain people that opened my eyes and made me aware of so many things.

For this reason, the mere thought that the blog might help, today or in the future, even one person become aware of something, reflect, make a good decision, find a good book, or have a good idea for their future gives me great satisfaction.

Let's start here: where you start and where you want to go. You can learn from the past, but the present is what matters, and what we do today and every day can shape what the future will be like for us.

Every day there are new variables, and variables that do not change.

Our lives are a very complex system, which is why there are no laws or solutions that work for everyone. But there are more objective principles and variables, inherent in people and in reality. Some have remained valid for centuries; others arise from and belong to the era and present in which we live. They have been explored by great people and minds from the past and our time.

We need to be good at bringing in our own parameters, our own variables, and getting to know as many mental models as possible, in order to understand how they fit and can be shaped and fitted into our lives, so that we can move closer to the right direction every day. We will never hit it exactly, but it exists for each of us, and even if we never do, every day we can move closer to it or further away from it. That depends largely on us.