If You Don’t Know Where You Want to Go, Can You Choose Your Own Path?

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.”

Alice asks to be shown the way, but the Cheshire Cat returns her to a question without which no road can be chosen meaningfully. Seeing the available paths is not enough — one must at least have some sense of where one wants to go.

If a person does not define a direction of their own, they do not remain still. They continue to make decisions, use opportunities, and follow available routes. But the direction begins to be determined by circumstances, habits, the expectations of others, and ready-made ideas about what their life should look like.

People today rarely suffer from a lack of roads. More often, they are faced with too many routes, too much advice, too many goals, and too many ways of becoming “successful.” Yet an abundance of possibilities does not automatically create a direction of one’s own. Having the opportunity to choose a path does not yet mean having the capacity to understand which path a person is prepared to recognize as their own.

The Cheshire Cat’s question therefore concerns more than the destination of Alice’s journey. It reveals a deeper problem of human self-formation: can a person participate in choosing their own path if they have not yet determined what their movement is meant to lead toward?

This question cannot be reduced to the requirement to set the right goal once and for all. A person is not always able to see the final destination in advance: understanding changes with experience, and some possibilities become visible only through movement. But not having a final answer is different from refusing to participate in the search for one. A person may not know exactly where they will arrive and still understand why they are taking the next step and what they regard as significant. Direction then exists not as a ready-made map of life, but as an evolving connection between experience, understanding, choice, and action.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is not used here as a source of the concept of Human Self-Formative Capacity or as evidence of its scientific validity. Alice’s conversation with the Cheshire Cat serves as a literary lens through which to examine one of the questions central to HSFC: how does movement along an available route differ from a person’s participation in determining a direction of their own?

When a Question About the Road Becomes a Question About the Goal

By the time Alice meets the Cheshire Cat, she has already come a considerable way, hardly choosing any of the stages of her journey in advance. She followed the White Rabbit, fell down the rabbit hole, and moved from one unexpected situation to another. Her journey is full of movement, but for a long time its direction is determined by whatever happens to appear immediately before her.

When the road divides, Alice asks the Cheshire Cat which way she should go. At first glance, she seems to be missing information about the terrain. But the Cat does not describe the routes — he asks where she wants to get to.

In this way, a practical question about the road becomes a question about the basis of choice. The same path may be right or wrong not in itself, but depending on where a person is trying to go. Until the desired direction has been defined, it is impossible to determine which road brings them closer to it and which leads them away.

Alice replies that she does not much care where she gets to. Then, the Cat observes, it does not much matter which way she goes. This answer does not prohibit movement. On the contrary, Alice is certain to get somewhere if she walks long enough. But reaching some place does not in itself turn movement into a chosen path. A person may successfully cover the distance, arrive at a new point, and only afterward discover that the destination itself never held any real significance for them.

Here a distinction emerges between the result of movement and authorship of direction. Circumstances may lead a person into a profession, a relationship, or a way of life they did not deliberately choose, and the outcome may still prove valuable. Not every unplanned path is someone else’s path: experience can reveal significance that a person could not have foreseen in advance.

Yet arriving at a point by chance does not make it part of self-formation simply because the person managed to get there. What matters is what they do next with the experience they have gained: whether they recognize its significance, relate it to their own understanding, accept the direction that has emerged, change it, or continue along it only because they already happen to be on that path.

A path of one’s own, therefore, does not necessarily begin with a goal invented independently. A direction may be suggested by family, culture, a profession, or a chance encounter. The question of inner authorship arises not from the origin of the opportunity, but from whether it becomes an object of personal reflection and subsequent choice.

When a Goal Is Chosen Before It Is Fully Understood

Alice does, however, have a goal: to reach the beautiful garden she has seen through the small door. To do this, she looks for the key, changes her size, and returns to the door. But Alice knows almost nothing about what awaits her there. She can see fountains and flowers, but not the rules and relationships that shape life in the garden. An attractive image of the destination appears before any real knowledge of what it contains.

The same happens outside the story. A person may strive for a profession, a relationship, or a way of life while imagining it through external signs and other people’s accounts. A sincerely desired goal may rest on incomplete understanding: before beginning the journey, a person does not yet possess the experience that can only be gained through movement.

Once Alice reaches the garden, she discovers more than beauty. The gardeners are painting white roses red because they fear punishment for their mistake. The croquet game is governed by the Queen’s whims, the rules change with her wishes, and the threat of execution accompanies almost every disagreement. The place Alice had wanted to reach for so long turns out not to be the end of her search, but new material for evaluation.

This is the paradox of goal-directed movement: the goal organizes the path, but only the path makes it possible to understand the goal. Before arrival, a person evaluates an imagined future; afterward, they evaluate a lived reality. A gap may emerge between the two.

If the original goal must remain unchanged simply because effort has already been invested in it, the past decision begins to exert power over new understanding. A person continues moving not because they still regard the direction as meaningful, but because they once chose it, have already done a great deal for it, or have come to connect it with their sense of who they are.

But abandoning a goal at the first difficulty is not self-formation either. New knowledge may require not abandoning the goal, but a more precise understanding of the conditions, a change in the way one acts, or a willingness to persist through necessary difficulty. The obstacle itself does not prove that the direction was wrong, just as a previous decision does not prove that it must be preserved.

What matters for HSFC is something else: does the experience gained become a basis for reassessing the direction? Has the meaning of the goal changed? Does it remain consistent with the person’s new understanding? Does the experience call for abandoning it, refining it, or changing the way it is pursued?

Reconsidering one’s direction in such a case does not mean lacking an inner course. On the contrary, the capacity to change a goal when understanding has changed protects a person from becoming subordinate to an earlier version of themselves. Being true to oneself does not always mean continuing along a path once chosen. Sometimes it appears in the willingness to recognize that the person making the next decision now knows more than the person who chose the road at the beginning.

When Movement Has a Goal but Lacks Inner Authorship

A clear destination does not yet make a direction one’s own. A goal may be precisely formulated, and a person’s actions may be consistent and effective, while the movement as a whole still remains a response to a demand they have never regarded as open to choice.

In Wonderland, the characters constantly know what Alice should do next. The White Rabbit mistakes her for his maid and sends her to fetch his gloves and fan. The Duchess lectures her, the Queen determines the rules of the game, and the participants in the trial demand obedience to an order whose meaning is not open to question. Each time, Alice is offered not only a specific action but also a ready-made direction for participation: carry out the instruction, take the assigned place, accept someone else’s explanation of what is happening.

Sometimes she follows these instructions. Agreeing to carry out a proposed action does not in itself mean losing inner authorship. Advice from another person may be reasonable, an external demand may be necessary, and a proposed goal may be meaningful. Self-formation does not require rejecting everything that originates outside the person.

The distinction lies in whether a person is able to examine the proposed direction for themselves: to understand what the action serves, relate it to what they consider significant, and accept, modify, or reject it on the basis of a judgment they have formed. A goal becomes one’s own not at the moment of independent invention, but through the process of working through its meaning.

There is therefore no simple boundary between an external direction and one’s own. A person may make a goal proposed by someone else their own. Conversely, a goal they consider “their own” may turn out to be an automatic continuation of internalized expectations. The source of the proposal does not by itself determine the source of authorship.

This is where the Cheshire Cat’s question takes on an additional meaning. “Where do you want to get to?” is not merely a request to name a destination. It returns responsibility to the person for the connection between the goal and the road they have chosen. Someone else’s route may lead to a valuable place, but no one else can determine on a person’s behalf whether the point reached will become part of their own path.

When Uncertainty Does Not Mean the Absence of Direction

It is impossible to know in advance where every choice will lead. A person cannot fully foresee who they will become in a new profession, what a relationship may reveal to them, or whether an initial goal will retain its significance. Life does not provide a complete map before movement begins; some directions are created through movement itself, as experience changes understanding and opens new possibilities.

Uncertainty, therefore, does not in itself indicate the absence of an inner course. A person may not know the final destination and still be able to distinguish between directions. They may understand what they want to move toward, what they want to preserve, what they are no longer willing to serve, and what kind of change in themselves they regard as significant. Such understanding is not enough to provide a precise route, but it is enough to prevent all roads from appearing equally valuable.

Here it is important to distinguish between a goal as a predefined point and direction as a basis for choosing the next action. A goal makes it possible to measure progress toward a specific result. Direction helps a person choose when the result cannot yet be named precisely or must be refined as they move.

For example, a person may not know exactly what professional role they will eventually occupy, but may understand that they want to create rather than merely execute. They may not know the final form their relationships will take, but know that they are unwilling to build them on constant fear. They may not have a complete plan for their own development, but still distinguish between experience that expands their capacity to understand and act and experience that they merely reproduce automatically.

Such orientations may be mistaken, contradictory, or borrowed. Their significance for HSFC is determined not by the feeling of certainty they provide, but by the way a person works with them: whether they test them in experience, relate them to consequences, refine them, and translate them into action.

An inner course, therefore, is not like an arrow fixed once and for all in a single direction. It is the capacity to repeatedly re-establish the connection between what a person has understood, what they have recognized as significant, and what they intend to do next. Direction is maintained not by keeping goals unchanged, but through continued participation in their evaluation and revision.

What Makes a Direction One’s Own?

A direction of one’s own cannot be identified simply by the strength of desire. A person may passionately pursue a goal whose significance they have absorbed without ever examining it. Nor can it be identified by independence from others: no path is formed outside language, culture, relationships, available opportunities, and historical circumstances. A willingness to go against the majority does not prove authorship either — resistance can be just as automatic a reaction as conformity.

For self-formation, what matters is not where the initial impulse came from, but what the person subsequently does with it. Do they notice what is actually directing their movement? Are they able to relate a proposed goal to their own understanding? Do they test its significance through experience? Do they revise their decision when the previous explanation no longer corresponds to what is happening? And do they translate new understanding into a change in how they act thereafter?

In this process, the goal ceases to be merely a point located somewhere ahead. The movement toward it also participates in shaping the person themselves. The path toward it develops certain capacities, reinforces particular ways of relating to oneself and others, requires accepting some changes and rejecting others. The question “Where do I want to get to?” therefore cannot be fully separated from another: who am I becoming while I am on the way there?

It is precisely this connection that distinguishes a chosen direction from a simple preference for an outcome. A person may want a particular position without noticing that the way they are pursuing it is destroying the very qualities that made the outcome meaningful to them. They may obtain what they wanted and discover that the entire path has been forming in them a way of acting with which they are no longer willing to identify.

HSFC does not provide a ready-made answer as to which goal a person should choose, nor does it assume that every independently made decision is formative. The concept draws attention to the process through which a goal is recognized, evaluated, worked through, and connected to changes in subsequent understanding and action.

A direction of one’s own, therefore, does not have to be unusual, independent, or unchanging. It may coincide with the expectations of the surrounding environment, continue a family tradition, or be suggested by another person. But it becomes part of inner authorship only when a person does not merely follow it, but participates in determining its significance and in what that path transforms them into.

Not Knowing the Whole Road Does Not Mean Going Anywhere

The conversation with the Cheshire Cat can be read as a formula for goal-setting: first decide where you want to get to, then choose the road. But its meaning becomes deeper once we recognize that a person is not always able to determine the final destination in advance and should not preserve a goal in spite of everything they learn along the way.

The absence of a complete map does not deprive movement of authorship. A person determines the next step on the basis of their current understanding, examines the consequences, and allows for the possibility that new experience may require a revision of direction.

A path of one’s own, therefore, is not necessarily one that a person invented from scratch, follows alone, or never changes. It is a path whose significance they are able to recognize, evaluate, and reconsider, turning the experience they gain into a basis for subsequent action.

The Cheshire Cat does not choose the road for Alice. He does something more important: he returns her to the question from which she had tried to exclude herself. Before asking which path is right, she has to recognize that the rightness of a path depends not only on the terrain, but also on the direction to which she is prepared to give significance.

A person who has not chosen a direction will still arrive somewhere. They may even travel far, overcome many obstacles, and achieve a result that others call success. But the distance travelled will not, by itself, answer the question of whether the path was truly their own.

It is impossible to know the entire road in advance. But it is possible not to surrender to others the right to decide where the next step should lead and what it will transform us into.