Every journey — even imaginary or creative ones — have both a destination and a starting point. It’s human nature, I think, to focus more on where we’re going than where we’re starting from. After all, the purpose of the journey is to go somewhere else, to leave behind where we are, and while in reality our physical journeys are round-trip as often as not, with a journey based on learning new things, the overall objective is to reach what we perceive to be a better place.

Once we introduce ideas of good, better, and best, we’re implying a judgment process. In a sense, we’re setting a sort of goal for ourselves. And in order to achieve that goal we’ll have to draw certain comparisons — comparisons between now and then, comparisons between here and there, comparisons between our starting point and our final destination.

This all…