What Is Next?

On faithfulness, the present moment, and the only question that actually matters.

I have a question that keeps showing up — in my prayers, in my journals, sometimes in the middle of a conversation when my mind wanders. The question is simple, and I have written it down more times than I can count:

What is next?

I do not think I am alone in this. There is something about that question that feels urgent and alive, like the answer is just around the corner — a new job, a new city, a new relationship, a new version of yourself that finally has it together. I have chased that corner for years. And here is what I have found: the corner keeps moving.

This post is my attempt to work through what I now believe the answer actually is. It came slowly, through prayer, good counsel, Scripture, and — somewhat unexpectedly — through finishing two books back to back that, on the surface, could not look more different from each other.

Two Books, One Theme

The first book is Theosis: The True Purpose of Human Life by Archimandrite George Kapsanis — a short, dense Orthodox theological text that asks the biggest possible question: what is a human being actually for? The author’s answer is theosis, the ongoing process of becoming more like Christ, growing in intimacy with God through the Holy Spirit. He argues that the human soul was made for complete union with Christ, and that every other pursuit — no matter how good, how noble, how successful — will leave the heart restless and incomplete if it is not ordered toward that end.

The second book is Redeeming Productivity by Reagan Rose — a practical, Protestant, almost cheerfully actionable book about habit tracking, goal setting, and using your time well for the glory of God. My girlfriend gave it to me, and I loved it. From the age of about sixteen to twenty, I was obsessed with self-help and entrepreneurship books — they shaped how I think about discipline and intentionality. Reagan takes many of those same frameworks and asks: what if we actually pointed all of this toward Christ? What if the goal of your to-do list was not personal optimization, but faithfulness? He opens with the Ephesians verse that has been ringing in my ears:

“Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil.” — Ephesians 5:15–16

At first glance: Orthodox theological treatise, meet evangelical productivity manual. These books seem like they are from different worlds. But reading them nearly simultaneously, I kept feeling the same thing pressing in from both directions. Both are answering the same question. Both are saying: the point of your life is to become more like Christ, and the way you spend your time either moves you toward that or away from it. One says it in the language of ancient theology. The other says it in the language of a morning routine. But the target is identical.

I do not think it was an accident that I read them together. That sounds simple, but I mean it seriously — I think God put both books in my hands at the same time because He was trying to answer a question I had been asking for months.

The Trouble With X — and With Me

Before I could receive that answer, I had to get honest about why I was asking the question in the first place.

“What is next?” sounds like ambition. And it can be. But for me, if I am being truthful, the question has often been something closer to: When does the real version of my life begin? I have operated, more than I would like to admit, with the belief that something just over the horizon was going to fundamentally change me. A sport would do it. A business breakthrough would do it. The right mentor, the right relationship, the right city.

What I have discovered — slowly, and with some embarrassment — is that wherever I go, I am there too. The same Shaemus, with the same tendencies, the same blind spots, the same unresolved patterns that I thought I had left behind in the last chapter.

C.S. Lewis writes about this in an essay called The Trouble With X. He describes how we all have a “Person X” in our lives — a coworker, a family member, a friend — whom we blame for our problems. Person X is the reason we are not happy, not successful, not at peace. And so we leave. We get a new job, a new apartment, a new circle. And Person X reappears in a new form, with a new name. We leave again. And the third version of Person X shows up worse than the first, and we look back at the original Person X with something approaching nostalgia — at least it wasn’t this bad.

Lewis’s uncomfortable observation is this: the reason Person X keeps appearing everywhere we go is that we are also somebody’s Person X. We are the difficult one, the problem, the obstacle in someone else’s story. And more than that — our own sins and flaws travel with us. You cannot escape yourself by changing your zip code.

His counsel is pointed:

“Abstain from all thinking about other people’s faults, unless your duties as a teacher or parent make it necessary to think about them. Whenever the thoughts come unnecessarily into one’s mind, why not simply shove them away? And think of one’s own faults instead? For there, with God’s help, one can do something.”

And then, even more directly:

“Of all the awkward people in your house or job there is only one whom you can improve very much. That is the practical end at which to begin.”

That one person is you. That one person, for me, is me.

The Savior We Keep Looking For

Here is where the Lewis essay and the two books begin to converge for me, because both are really diagnosing the same disease: the habit of looking for salvation in the wrong places.

I have looked for it in sports — in the identity of being an athlete, in the clarity and purpose a training program provides. I have looked for it in business — in the idea that if I could just build the right thing, achieve the right level of success, I would finally feel like myself. I have looked for it in relationships and mentors, believing that the right person would call something out of me that I could not call out on my own.

None of it worked. Not because sports are bad, or business is bad, or mentors are bad. But because I was asking those things to do something they were never designed to do. I was asking them to save me.

This is precisely what Archimandrite George is diagnosing in Theosis. He writes that the human soul was created for complete intimacy with Christ — and that every other love, every other ambition, every other pursuit will leave a residue of incompleteness if it is not rooted there. I have felt that residue. The new sport eventually becomes routine. The business win fades. The mentor turns out to be human. And the question returns: What is next?

But what if that question is not really about my career or my circumstances? What if, underneath all of it, the question is: What is the meaning of my life? What if “what is next” is really “what am I for?”

George answers: you are for theosis. Growing closer to Christ. Becoming more like Him, by grace, through the Holy Spirit, in the ordinary moments of your actual life.

Reagan Rose answers: you are for the glory of God — to make God look worthy of praise, to obey His commands, to make disciples, and to make good use of the time He has given you. The days are evil. Do not waste them.

Different languages. Same answer. Same target.

Now Is Next

So here is what I believe God has been trying to tell me through all of this — through the prayers, the journaling, the counsel, the books:

What is next is not coming. What is next is now. And now is where the work actually happens.

The next version of my life will not be born from a new location or a new opportunity. It will be born from what I choose to steward faithfully in this present moment — this job, this relationship, this body, this soul. What I am faithful with now is the seed of what comes next. There is no shortcut around the present.That means I have to stop scanning the horizon for the thing that is going to change everything and start asking a much smaller, more demanding question:

What can I do today, right here, right now, to be more like Jesus?

Books referenced in this post:

Theosis: The True Purpose of Human Life — Archimandrite George Kapsanis

Redeeming Productivity — Reagan RoseThe Trouble With X — C.S. Lewis (from God in the Dock)