Trajectories

I think it is relatively easy to see a person's "life trajectory" once you get to know them.  I believe you can predict with a fairly high degree of accuracy where a person will be in 5 or 10 years.  This is good if a person is on a positive trajectory, but not so good when he or she is not headed in the right direction.

What's more difficult is to predict your own trajectory.  I think there are all kinds of biases and self-perception issues that make it difficult to predict your own future.  But a friend from the outside could probably do it pretty well.

What's even trickier, I think, is to change your own trajectory.  It seems to take a massive amount of energy to get things going in a different direction.  Maybe it's force of habit, I don't know.  But it all goes back to that simple saying: "if you always do the same thing, don't expect any different results."