The Wrong Wall
5. We don't reach meaning by achieving our vision. We discover our vision by descending into our meaning. — Steve Martin – Vision-Keeper and Dream Coach
The Wrong Wall
He’d heard the line his whole life—be careful the ladder isn’t leaning against the wrong wall—and he’d nodded at it, the way you nod at things that are true for other people.
Then he was sixty, retired, exactly where his vision had pointed for forty years, and he understood it from the inside for the first time. He had climbed flawlessly. Every rung, on schedule. And he’d reached the top to find his ladder leaning against a wall he’d chosen at twenty-five, for reasons he could no longer remember and was no longer sure were his.
The terrible thing wasn’t the wrong wall. It was that the ladder had been so well-built. So sturdy. So admirable. Everyone had praised the climbing.
No one had asked about the wall.
He sat with that a long while. And then, because he was a practical man, he did the only thing left to do. He climbed down—slowly, it’s harder going down at sixty—and he stood at the bottom and asked the question he should have asked at twenty-five.
What is this all for?
He had twenty good years left. Plenty of time to move the ladder.
Plenty of people don’t get to. He moved it. The second wall was the right one.
He’d been misremembered well after all.
My grandpa always said:
Don’t ask what you want to build. Ask what you’d be heartbroken to leave unbuilt. That’s the real one.
One Thing That You Can Do Right Now
Write your one true sentence.
Finish this in writing today: If I lost everything else, I would still believe that ______ matters.
That sentence is your water table. Tape it where you’ll see it.
Input from my Advisory Board
Rumi: Would close his eyes and smile. “What you seek is seeking you,” he’d whisper. “You went down into the dark and the Beloved was the dark.” He’d call meaning the wine and vision the cup, and remind you the cup is nothing without the wine.