Setting your life’s objectives is surprisingly difficult. Knowing yourself is surprisingly difficult.

If you get the objectives right, a lieutenant can write the strategy.
      - General George C. Marshall

In my life, there are four key categories of objectives:

• My spiritual life. How do I live so that my relationship with my inner world, my connection and ability to draw on the wisdom of my inner world, is enhanced?

• My creative life. There is a special joy that comes from connecting with creative work, from drawing out from inside myself the deep messages, messages that may be pre-verbal and poorly understood, and them. And expressing my love of wild nature — the peace and restoration I’ve experienced there. I’ve learned, the hard way, that to maximize my creative life I need to work alone.

• I need to live where I can walk and connect daily with the natural world. In particular I love big old trees and walking along a roaring ocean.

• My objectives for life in the world which include friendships, financial needs, and even mundane details like proximity to good grocery stores —- I love to cook for others. These details combine, for me, to facilitate a life-enhancing, soul-enhancing, existence.

We’re all different. My objectives will very likely be different than yours. The important thing is that we set them ourselves, rather than abdicate to others, or go with the flow —- simply adopt the norms and values of the culture that surrounds us — which is often trivial and ugly. Thirty-five years ago I interviewed Paul Schurke, arctic explorer and founder of Wintergreen Dogsled Lodge in Ely Minnesota. He said something that has stuck with me.

When I was a boy, I came up to the Boundary Waters on a trip with a church group — kind of like the Boy Scouts.  One thing became indelibly fixed in my mind.  A fleeting moment, standing on an island, on a beautiful lake on the Minnesota/Ontario border.  The sun was dipping down below the horizon.  There was a bear on the opposite shore.  It was just the exquisite beauty of the surroundings.  That moment stuck with me, and I started thinking that I had to live up here eventually. 
       I feel very fortunate —- very blessed —- that at that tender age I developed a compelling sense of direction in my life.  I didn't know what I was going to do with my life, but from that moment I developed a compelling sense of place.  I knew what mattered to me was not so much how I made my living, but rather where I lived.  The place was more important than the financial.  I felt privileged and proud to be so well on my way.  Latching on to what life had for me.  

All that matters is what you love
and what you love is who you are
and who you are is where you are
and where you are is where you will be
when death takes you across the river.

You can't avoid the journey but
you can wake up... now
and see where you've been
and where you are going.
- John Squadra, This Ecstasy