While drinking my morning coffee after oversleeping today, a curious question suddenly flashed through my mind:

What if life came with a manual?

As someone who enjoys people-watching from time to time, I’ve noticed that many of the people who seem to have it all together share one striking similarity:

They know what they want out of life.

Meanwhile, the rest of us — whether we admit it or not — are simply clueless. Yet we can’t help but wonder:

What do those people know that we seem to be oblivious to?

And with that, I’d say the first, and perhaps most important, chapter of life’s manual would be:

1. What does one want?

Funny enough, it’s rather cliché. Early on, we’re all asked some version of the same question:

“What do you want to be when you grow up?”

I can’t even remember how I answered it back then.

Perhaps that’s part of the reason I feel lost most of the time. I never really gave the question much thought — until now.

Maybe the price of freedom and autonomy is exactly this feeling of being lost.

There are so many things we can choose from, yet we have limited time and energy to explore them all. Eventually, we have to make a choice—a difficult choice that means letting go of the alternatives.

It may indeed be true that we always have a choice. But it isn’t always clear what those choices are. And even when they are available to us, that doesn’t necessarily mean we can afford them.

Once we know the answer to the first question, perhaps we can move on to the second:

2. Why do we want it?

The reason for wanting something may be nothing more than a hunch. It may even seem petty to someone else.

But however it is perceived by others, does that really matter?

It is not their business to meddle with our reasons in the first place.

It may be petty to them. But so long as it keeps us going, perhaps that is enough.

This second question serves as a reinforcement — a reminder of the choices we’ve made along the way and the weight each choice carries.

Yes, we might wake up one day and realize that some of the things we once wanted were misguided.

But we are still free to make an alternative choice.

The way back may require more effort, but perhaps it is still worth taking rather than remaining lost forever.

And finally, after answering the first two questions, we are faced with the ultimate one:

3. How do we achieve it?

Only by knowing the direction we want to take and understanding why it matters can we begin to find a creative path toward it.

Easier said than done, of course — especially when the choice we’ve made leads us down a road less travelled.

Perhaps, then, the feeling of being lost was never really a matter of place.

Maybe it was a matter of **identity **all along.

Perhaps the real questions aren’t simply:

Where am I going?

Or even:

What do I want?

Perhaps, ultimately, the question is:

Who am I — and what am I becoming?

Maybe that’s the part no manual could ever answer for us.

What did you want to be when you grew up, and how has that answer changed for you today?

Let’s chat in the comments below.