At first I thought it was the car. It was shaking. Here I was at a red light, taking one of my first driving lessons, and the car was about to stall, I thought. Then I looked down at my left leg, which was twitching back and forth like a piston, shaking the car along with it. And then I looked at my driving instructor, the cause of my nervousness. He was a caustic Israeli who yelled at me for everything--"Go!" he would shout if I took too long making a left turn. He almost certainly got his experience training soldiers to drive tanks. Hence it was that he delivered orders rather than gave lessons. Like that day's. "Drive me to the convenience store," he commanded, with a hint of disgust. "I need to get cigarettes."

That was 13 years ago. I went on to fail my first driving test, after nearly killing me and my evaluator while making a left turn out of the parking lot. I blame my instructor.

Yet somehow, in the haze of battle, I managed to pick up some useful knowledge. And one piece of knowledge that stuck with me is this: look where you want the car to go, because your mind will follow your eyes, and your steering will follow your mind. It's a simple concept, but probably one of the most important things to remember when driving. If you're in a skid, for example, you need to look at the road ahead so you can steer in that direction, rather than look towards the ditch you're trying to avoid.

Most people, and particularly those who have been through a bad skid, would agree with the importance of looking where you want to go. I think most people also recognize that in everyday life, your focus affects your path; if you're constantly focusing on negative outcomes, your mind steers your actions towards their realization. Conversely, visualizing positive outcomes steers you there. This is the basis for much self-improvement through self-hypnosis and visualization.

Yet when confronted with the unfamiliar and hence scary, people tend to forget this commonsense idea. One of the best examples is conversations about longevity and life extension. People who are unfamiliar with the real prospect of healthy life extension often express existential angst when considering the addition of decades to their life. Hell, even I'm not immune to this, despite spending the past six years regularly reading and writing about it.

In thinking about it, however, I believe this angst often comes up because we take our eyes off the road, which is caused by the fact that we don't know where to fix our gaze. For today's lifespan, and today's world, people have a fairly clear vision, dictated by social custom, of the road ahead. The signs along the way typically read "school," "career," "marriage," "kids," "retirement" and "death." At each landmark, people look to the next. They know the route. But if you question the map, perhaps by proposing multiple careers, multiple retirements or, say, a long-delayed death, it becomes more difficult to know where you should be looking next. What's up ahead? We don't know for sure; things are changing fast, while at the same time the road is looking longer.

Because of this, I think we need to think about what new landmarks we can create, both as individuals and as a society. And we should make these visions as grand as possible, so that when our eyes are leading our minds to guide our actions, we're aiming for the stars rather than just the Moon.

What might such visions look like? Well, how's this for grandiose: colonizing the Universe. Sure, it sounds absurd; we're just barely able to routinely put people in space. But imagine how different your life would be if everyday you woke up and said, "One day, humanity will colonize the Universe. I want to be around for that. And I want everything I do to contribute directly or indirectly to its achievement." Or maybe look to more short-term, yet still grandiose, goals, like developing a sustainable energy infrastructure. Or completely eradicating poverty. Or ending all forms of reality television.

Whether you're feeling up for colonizing the Universe or not is besides the point--and we have plenty of time to debate its merits. What's important is that when we feel disoriented by moved, murky and missing landmarks, we create new ones upon which to focus our gaze. Those who are concerned about how to spend any extra time granted by life extension medicine don't need lectures so much as visions. And the more inspired those visions, the more motivating.

This past December, looking where I wanted to go saved my life when a car I was driving began fish-tailing across a snowy highway. Surprising even myself, rather than reacting in fear, I recalled my driving instruction and, without my legs shaking, looked ahead, eased off the accelerator and steered with the skid in the direction I wanted to head. After about 20 perilous seconds, which felt like hours, the car pulled out of the skid. It was a profound reminder. I should have called my driving instructor and gloated, in retribution for his caustic comments and cigarette runs. But I'd rather not look back; I want to go forward. After all, failing a driving test seems pretty minor when we have a universe to colonize.