Somebody once told me that a career is something that can only be seen afterwards; it cannot be planned. Life does not follow a plan, but winds along an undecidable path of cause and effect—which means that life is bigger than your intellect.

But then there are goals, those elusive things we want to achieve and often confuse with career planning and other admin. And as we know, leadership is something else entirely—admin is just organising things once we have seen the goal. Leadership is daring to define those goals and pursue them. Leadership is how you lead your life and set your goals.

And there are two kinds of goals: transactional and transformative.

So, now we come to the point of this newsletter.

I am writing two days before the launch of my second novel, Handful – The Boy at the End of the Rainbow, on Amazon. Earlier today, while driving around Lower Hutt delivering our Buddhist magazine, Tai Aronui, Buddhism in Focus, to SGI members, I suddenly stopped, pulled over, and looked down at the Hutt Valley. What I saw was not just the valley itself, but a metaphor of my life.

What made me a novelist at the very ripe age of 69?

Looking back on the valley of my life, I see many roads I have taken, many places I have been, and many people I have met.

Every twist and turn can now be plotted on a map of my life, which builds a neat career—if you want to call it that. I could see how dots that at times were blurry, or didn’t even look like dots at all, connected into a larger flow of causality, and I became me.

I’ve seen how I have had many goals, most of them transactional, but still important because they led me towards the points of transformation. Those transactional goals included becoming a theatre director, establishing a design company, and moving to New Zealand. Each was a crucial moment in time, a decision that demanded energy, courage and a good measure of luck.

They were about fifteen-year sprints, each carrying me closer to my most important, transformative goals:

1. To find my spiritual foundation

2. To fully use my creative potential

You must learn to swim, if you want to cross the river without a boat or a bridge

If I continue with the metaphor of the valley of my life, there was a deep and wide river running through it. The river of doubt rushed with rapids, dangerous rocks, and swift currents.

When I was young, my transactional goals carried me to that river of self-doubt and—if you like—imposter syndrome. I wasn’t enough. Or was I? Then my spiritual goal pushed me into the river, and I had to learn how to go with the flow until I managed to grasp the rope of hope and began to believe that it all made sense.

Thirty years of searching

It took over thirty years of spiritual practice—Buddhist practice, to be precise—to find my second transformative goal and to have the courage to tell myself that all these trials and tribulations, all these roads that seemed to lead nowhere, all these people I met and loved or loathed, were suddenly jewels. And I began to understand that I am the jeweller. I can make stories where these jewels shine.

I finally realised that everything I have experienced prepared me to reach my final goal: to fulfil my creative potential in a way that is unique to me, and possible only for me.

When I look at the covers of my books, I see how meaningful it all has been. Without the entirety of my life experience, I could never have written the stories I always knew I wanted to write, but was too shy and too scared even to begin.

Now I have written three novels in a single year, and there is much more to come. The transformative goal has opened the locks, and I have crossed my Rubicon.

I hope I will find readers for this journey that has become my career. And, as a certain Roman once said, Alea jacta est!

I hope this has made sense. I’d love to hear what you take from it.

Janus Lucky
www.januslucky.com

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