Sweet spot of life

From the moment we take our first breath, it feels like everyone else already knows what’s best for us.

The doctor estimates when we’ll enter this world.
Our parents decide when it’s time to go to school.
Teachers choose what we should learn.
Managers assign us roles they believe we’re fit for.
Our spouse decides when it’s time to start a family.
And later in life, even our children guide us gently into retirement.

At every stage, someone else seems to hold the blueprint of our lives—telling us where to go, what to do, and how to live. It's as if our journey was already mapped out, not by us, but by the expectations and experience of others.

But that raises a powerful question:
If everyone else knows what’s best for us, what do we actually know—about them? About ourselves?

We often live life not with a clear destination in hand, but by discovering it along the way—through people we meet, moments that shape us, and experiences that transform us.
Life isn’t like following GPS directions to a known address. It’s far messier than that.

In truth, life feels more like falling from the top of a mountain.

We tumble.
We hit boulders.
We slip through cracks.
We cling to roots and branches.
And somehow, eventually, we land in the valley below—a place that becomes our “destination,” not because we chose it, but because it’s where we ended up.

Some call it fate. Others call it chaos.
Either way, it’s real.

There are ancient schools of thought that claim a person falling from the top of the mountain will end up in a specific place in the valley—like a marble rolling down a funnel, or a rover landing on a precise spot on the moon. It’s all trajectory, they say. All physics. All destiny.

Everyone wants to end up in the better part of the valley.
And everyone has tricks and techniques for getting there.
But what defines the “better” part of life? That’s another debate entirely.

Yet life has this unbelievable, almost cruel tendency.
The person who free-falls without a single plan, no tricks, no calculations—often lands on his feet.
And the one who’s written an entire thesis on how to land in the “perfect” spot?
Sometimes ends up nowhere.

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