244. broaden your horizons

We tend to lose our imagination as we get older. Or maybe we trade it in for our increasing level of priorities or our increasingly limited bandwidth. Either way, it gets continuously harder to imagine a future we want than to remember a past we’ve lived through. So that past becomes a guide for our decisions, instead of the opposite. Making it through the day becomes the goal, rather than envisioning new horizons. This serves us to the point that it allows us to “fly” on autopilot through our day — and if we aren’t careful, even our life — by completing tasks and getting things done, but ultimately falls short on improving that life.

We’ve become less creative and imaginative as we age, and consequently more fixed and dogmatic in the narrative we allow ourselves to live by. And while this can be a way of life, it is certainly not a way to live.