On Living Well Beyond the Surface — Part I
Subsurface Thinking for Surface Living
“What can a life lived beneath the surface teach us about how to live on the surface?”
I spend much of my working life thinking about things I cannot see.
Thousands of meters beneath the surface, a well’s trajectory needs to be carefully steered toward the targeted reservoir zone to support good oil production. Decisions involving millions of dollars in investment are made based on signals, measurements, models, and interpretations of what lies beyond direct sight.
From formations beneath the Asian continent to those beneath the Atlantic Ocean, each layer tells a different story. Every layer carries a history of pressure, movement, deposition, time, and change. No two formations are exactly the same.
Most often, the formation never reveals everything at once. And most often, the actual conditions do not perfectly match our expectations.
Different formations. Different histories. Different conditions. Different ways of navigating.
Enormous consequences. High uncertainty. Incomplete visibility.
Predictable enough to be modeled. Mysterious enough to remain incomplete — like trying to piece together a puzzle without ever having all the pieces.
Sometimes, the good reservoir is encountered at the beginning of a section, disappears in the middle, and begins to reappear toward the end. Sometimes, the pattern is reversed. The formation rarely follows exactly what we expected it to be.
And all of this information arrives in real time.
We make decisions while the story is still unfolding.
And I think life works the same way.
Sometimes, something good appears early, disappears for a while, and returns when we least expect it. Sometimes, what we thought was the right direction turns out to be something else entirely. We rarely get to see the whole formation before we have to decide where to steer next.
Without realizing it, I have been learning something about life from the subsurface.
We don’t get to wait for the entire section to reveal itself. There is a well moving thousands of meters beneath the surface, millions of dollars at stake, and information arriving in real time and we still have to decide:
Do we hold? Do we adjust? Do we steer?
And life asks the same thing.
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We rarely know:
- whether the person will stay,
- whether the opportunity will work,
- whether the decision will pay off,
- whether the thing we’re grieving will eventually make sense,
- whether the path we’re on will lead where we imagined.
But the well keeps moving.
And so does life.
The real skill, perhaps, is not learning how to eliminate uncertainty.
It is learning how to remain calm when the reservoir suddenly disappears.
To resist the instinct to react simply because the information has changed.
To stay curious when the formation no longer looks the way we expected.
To embrace the discomfort of exploring what is unknown, even when the uncertainty is high.
Because sometimes, the reservoir is not gone.
We simply haven’t reached the next piece of the formation yet.
Something missing from your life is not always the end of the story.
There are things life reveals only in retrospect. Sometimes, what looks like an absence is simply a change in direction — an invitation to keep navigating without knowing exactly where the next turn will lead.
In geosteering, a reservoir that suddenly disappears from one part of the section does not necessarily mean the drilling has ended. The formation may change. The reservoir may reappear. Or the absence of one reservoir may lead us toward another — one with a different character, a better oil show, or simply a different opportunity for production.
You don’t always need to know whether the next reservoir is better. You need to be willing to steer toward what the new information is showing you.
Sometimes, what disappears is not meant to be recovered.
Sometimes, the missing reservoir is what redirects us toward another.
And we would never have known it if we had insisted on staying exactly where we were.
Regulation isn’t about knowing the outcome. It’s about staying regulated enough to respond to new information without letting fear make the decision for you.
You don’t need certainty to move forward.
You need enough awareness to read what is in front of you.
Enough humility to know what you cannot know.
And enough trust to make the next adjustment.
Read. Regulate. Adjust. Keep moving. Repeat.
