Climbing our mountain
I like to think people throughout their lives are in the middle of climbing a mountain. At the peak of the mountain is something unknown, maybe one's ideal self, maybe something else. The journey up the mountain is one's life journey.
There are multiple trails up the mountain and along those trails are obstacles. When you face an obstacle, you can challenge it in many ways. Sometimes you can face it head on, other times you try to find a way around it.
It may seem like you're not making progress when facing an obstacle, but you're always making progress. Moving sideways along the mountain to get around an obstacle is progress, even if you're not moving up the mountain.
When you see the same obstacle again and again, you'll be better prepared each time. It is part of the process to struggle. Struggle is a prerequisite to progress.
The point of life though isn't to look back at the path we took up the mountain or to predict the path we need to take to go further up. We just need to take things one step at a time. It's not the direction we take that matters, it's that we're climbing to begin with.