A priori

Rank ordering is a simple exercise, but I find that many cannot rank their days or their emotional meanderings.  Sometimes people find that they can set a goal or two, but watching their actions to obtain the goal they have set shows that rank ordering is not something they are accustomed to doing.  Too many other desires pull them away from what they say is important.

Higher education helps to a degree so that people know that they really can't achieve something unless they rank order.  And certainly, advanced studies or successful entrepreneurship prove the necessity of rank ordering in order to achieve what one sets out to achieve.  Watching the most recent superbowl showed the importance of rank ordering for sure because the quarterback with no superbowl, or playoff experience for that matter, didn't know to rank order clock management as an a priori task in his preparation.  The other quarterback did, and the game came down to managing the clock well.

Since my 30s I have rank ordered my life, and when the circumstances allowed for unilateral control of a situation, I have done exactly what I have wanted to do.  That's not the whole story, though.  Circumstances seldom allow for unilateral control.  I didn't order the death of a beloved professor that, had he lived, probably would have changed the path I took.  But he died, and I went about my business bettered by his influence, but not bettered by his direction.  I didn't order my son's death at a young age, and that altered my path over time absolutely from the trajectory it was on. 

As I consider the rank order of my top five desires, I know what it takes for each item to be realized.  Not any of them are wholly within my own ability to realize.  So, I am setting out toward the realization of the top ranked item first, knowing that, with faith in the part not dependent on me, its realization will bring me the greatest of earthly happiness.