My wife sometimes lovingly (I think) refers to me as Cliff Clavin. The area in which I sometimes even remind myself of Cliffy is when I offer some shard of trivia I picked up somewhere in my reading or surfing. “It’s a little-known fact…”

"It's a little-known fact..."

If you have an insatiable and eclectic curiosity about the world, you are living in the greatest time ever to satisfy it. Never before in the world’s history has so much information been available to us. There is really no excuse for not learning anything you want to know.

As an example, if you are technically challenged and do not know what a hyperlink is, I can provide a hyperlink here to help you understand what it is. How cool is that? A hyperlink on hyperlink. In this fashion we can access vast amounts of information. Now that smart phones are becoming common tools, all of this information is literally at our fingertips. Cliff Claven would have been even more insufferable if he had possessed a smart phone.

Recently the thought hit me that while I can access anything I want to know, this information doesn’t necessarily produce meaning. Meaning deals with the end, purpose, or significance of something. Just because I can know in a few seconds about The Dardanelles or the Cilician Gates does not mean I can produce meaning in my life through that knowledge. At my fingertips is incredible information, but what we all really want is meaning.

Meaning has to factor into our Forward Stories. We want to write a future that is consistent with our understanding of why we are here and what we are supposed to be doing. If you have not yet developed an ambition that is in harmony with what it means to live, then be sure to make that a priority. Your ambition needs to be closely tied to what you think the meaning of life is. Perhaps a big part of your story for the immediate future (say, the next three months) is to focus not on information, but rather on meaning. When you emerge with a good grasp on meaning, then you will be ready to write a truly compelling Forward Story.

“If memory serves, the umbilical chord is 90% potassium.” -CC