Some ideas eat you slowly.

When I was 14, walking home from school, trudging the quiet, leafy suburban road towards home, a thought popped into my head:

What if all this school thing is a charade?

What if it’ll have no bearing on my life to come?

Fast forward 21 years.

I'm sitting in a central London office. First meeting to discuss our newly won contract worth more than our previous five years turnover combined.

And a different thought:

Maybe my work here is done.

Some ideas eat you slowly.

Nine weeks ago was my dad's funeral.

My brother spoke about Dad's ability to see and nurture each of our siblings' natural abilities and inclinations.

Mine, apparently, seen on our holidays, cycling up and down mountains.

Not the cycling - although expert ability, obvs.

The mapping.

The imagining.

The studying of terrain.

The wondering where a path might lead.

Listening then and since, I realised something.

Maybe he’d seen something in me long before I could see it myself.

A mapmaker, a reader of the terrain.

Which brings us to the acorn.

James Hillman wrote that each of us arrives carrying something seeking expression. An acorn. A seed. A pattern. A calling.

Whatever language you prefer.

The idea resonated because it felt familiar.

That thought at fourteen.

That thought in the London office.

Neither arrived as a plan.

Both felt more like a tug.

A quiet wording in my ear.

Something underneath trying to get my attention.

And perhaps that is what the last years have been about.

Not building something. Cutting back the overgrowth. And listening. Allowing.

Letting old stories loosen their grip so newer ones could emerge.

So what needed to die?

Some of the striving.

Some of the proving.

Some of the status chasing.

Some of the belief that more effort was always the answer.

Not all of it.

Just enough to make room.

And what wanted to grow?

A deeper interest in wisdom than achievement.

In insight more than accomplishment.

In contribution more than success.

Which brings us to the surfing sage.

A phrase I've borrowed to describe a shift many of us seem to encounter at some point.

A movement from forcing to flowing.

From gripping to trusting.

From striver to surfer.

It's a journey I've been exploring with LeanMind-ers for a while now.

And one I'll write more about another time.

For now, though, the mapping.

Maybe what Dad saw all those years ago wasn't cycling.

Maybe he saw the first shoots of an acorn.

A reader of maps.

A creator of maps.

Someone willing to trust his own path.

And perhaps help others trust theirs.

What does any of this have to do with you?

Well.

If you've been asking yourself questions like:

Is this it?

What actually matters?

Where am I drifting, and why?

Then perhaps your acorn is tugging too.

And if you're not sure what it's saying, the clues may not lie ahead.

They may lie behind.

Back with the10yr old you.

Or the 11 yr old.

Or the 14 year old.

Back before the noise, the responsibilities, the calcified ideas, habits and stories.

Start there. And trust.