When life felt particularly stagnant during college, that was the question I would ask myself. Where could I be in 10 hours? In 10 hours, I could change everything. I could pack everything I own into my car and move to California. LA? San Francisco? Either. In that amount of time I could put my entire life on a different trajectory.
I could go to the airport, buy a ticket to Alaska, and be there.
I could fly from West Coast to East Coast.
We don’t always respect the nature of this because we usually plan so far in advance. A 6-hour flight feels like a 1-month trip because we’ve been anticipating it. What if we didn’t? I could wake up today, say “I don’t like being in Boston”, and head to Denver. Or drive to Canada. Or book a cruise to the Caribbean and leave that same night.
I could post all my belongings on Craigslist and convert them to cash. I would lose a lot of money, but that’s not the point. The point is that I could. Or I could put everything I own into a storage unit, lock it up, and walk away.
In physics, there are two types of energy: potential energy and kinetic energy. A book lying on a desk has potential energy – it could fall off the desk and would move until it hit the ground. A book flying through the air has kinetic energy, the energy of movement.
True power exists in potential energy. However, if potential energy is not occasionally transformed to kinetic energy, we forget it’s there. It stagnates. So go do something.