Bearing answers the central question of navigability: which direction currently deserves commitment? Not eternally — currently. It is where interior reality, values, responsibilities, relationships, competence, and circumstance come together, and it is not the same as preference: I feel like this today is not bearing. It is closer to given who I presently am, what I know, what matters, what I have committed to, and the actual conditions, what direction remains coherent?
Bearing is always provisional, because the field moves — a parent orients toward children for twenty years and later differently; a scientist pursues one problem until the question itself moves. It is distinct from purpose (what matters constrains a route without determining it) and from a pathway (a direction is not a road — bearing without traversability is aspiration). And it carries a limit: you own your bearing, but not the road, resources, or other participants required to travel it. See Navigability.