Human beings look to other human beings for hints on how their own lives might turn out; that’s why we read books and watch TV and keep tabs with old friends on facebook and cry during romantic comedies.

“We can never know what to want,” Milan Kundera writes in The Unbearable Lightness of Being. “because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come… we live everything as it comes, without warning, like an actor going on cold.” It’s that terror, perhaps, that endears us to observe and compare our lives to the lives of others (rather than to our untouchable past lives) in search of a cue, or a line, or at long last; a curtain call.

Who do you look to when you don’t know where to turn?  As human beings we have examples all around us, some good, some not so good.  Why do you seek out friendships with others?  It is in the company of my friends that I can most be who I am.  I am so very, very blessed to have the friends that I do.  In this one life that you are living how do you know you are growing?  I think one of the best tools for me are my journals.  My journals take the shape of many forms.  I have a computer journal, I have leather bound journals, I have spiral notebooks and even scraps of paper tucked here and there.  It is as I look through the movement of my life I can see the changes and growth, and yet I can also see the periods of stagnation.  Sometimes living life as it comes can be scary, but where do you choose to focus?  See how others are doing it and get some good role models and live the best life you possibly can!  Start with journaling about your thoughts about where you are right now in this life.