How do I imagine this concept of goals? What’s a goal? Well, I guess a goal is a point essentially in the future, some place I’m going to get to or something I’m going to ultimately achieve. So herein lies the great question, doesn’t it? What is your goal in life?
Well, bit of a difficult one, isn’t it really? Because there is no real goal in life. There is no real purpose in life. It’s not natural. It’s not innate.
Unless unless I give my life a goal, there is no goal. So I could probably biologically, you know, thump along for 70, 80 years with absolutely no purpose in life, really. I mean, in history, millions upon millions of people have. And in a bizarre sense, they were happy, whatever that means, and we have the great dilemma. John Stuart Mill, his essay on liberty, I believe.
Who’s happier, Socrates unhappy or a pig in mud? And, I mean, gosh, it’s easy to see that it’s the pig in mud, but that’s apparently not the answer. The answer is Socrates because he understands what happiness is. So now we come to the dilemma of the modern age. Now we’ve been told that our goal in life is ultimately to be happy.
It’s somewhat innate. Though as Aristotle points out, we’ve talked about it before, it is this journey. So then, if I’m going to ultimately be happy, I’m going to have to have some form of goal. And I think at the beginning, I can just get my notebook, my friend, and I can write down a series of ideas. I want to be a butcher, a baker, a candlestick maker as the old poem goes as such.
But then ultimately, I must act. I must start out. I finish school and I start out in a job. And as the job kind of gets heavier and longer and more tedious and boring, unless I’m a bit of a fool, I realize that this job quote unquote is not gonna make me free and it’s certainly not gonna make me wealthy financially, I’m gonna have to take a chance on me. So then I need some form of visualization, I believe, something that I can see in the far distant future.
And if you can imagine getting up early in the morning and you act, so you walk out of your cabin and you stand there and you have the verdant forest in front of you, lots and lots of trees, and the far distance is a bit of a river, and then you’re at the foot of the mountain on the other side, and the peak of the mountain is kind of shrouded in mist, so you really can’t see the top of the mountain, but you get an idea. It’s there. So you begin. You start to walk, and when you first hoist the pack onto your shoulders, my gosh, It’s heavy. And the Christians talk about the cross.
Each of us has a cross that we have to bear, and the cross here meaning my own psychological, I guess, makeup. The mixture that is me somewhat, my fears, my frustrations, my anxiety, perhaps some of it innate in a sense whether my moods, am I more moody than other people, let’s say, then my family, what has been produced. So I have the pack, and then I’m off. I put one foot in front of another foot and so it goes. And along the way, I will come upon people.
In fact, some people perhaps pass me by. Some people I will join for a period of time. We’ll have a great conversation and then we’ll come to a crossroads in some place and the conversation will commence and it’ll be, well, I’m gonna go I wanna go this way. And the other person, no, no, I wanna go that way and so you ultimately, of course, must decide for yourself. Sorry, I’m going this way and you say goodbye.
And that’s somewhat analogous to an intimate relationship perhaps with another human being. Painful, but you must continue on. Because if you go their path, that could be their life and you might not be happy because it’s not your life. Why are so many wealthy people with all this money, good looking good looking children, etcetera, etcetera, why are they unhappy? Somewhere along the line, they took someone else’s path, quite obviously.
So you walk along. And then along the way what becomes a bit shocking is you’ll see the people that have failed and they’re lying motionless on the side of the path. And those perhaps are people that have sold their souls, stable job, maybe addiction, drugs, alcohol, but they’ve given up the journey essentially. But not you. Right?
Not you. So you sit down for a moment. Tears come to your eyes. You’re kinda overwhelmed. I don’t think I can go on, you say to yourself.
But you can. You can. And this is, I think, where we need some form of spirituality. We need a belief in a higher being, God, essentially. And we need some guidance and we need prayer.
I need to prayer to this great source which is bigger than me for power, for energy, for solace, for understanding. Get up. I put the pack on again, gosh, it’s heavy, but still it’s there, and I push on. I keep walking. I finally come to that great river.
Gosh. I don’t think I can cross this river. I can’t swim, but, wait a moment. There’s a log on the side. Maybe if I push that log out, I can get to the other side.
I can float down the raging river and I can, perhaps, god willing, steer it to the other shore. And after a long period of time, I’m soaking wet, I’m cold, I finally push the log to the other side. I sit for a moment, gain some strength, I’m off again. Now I’m at the foot of the mountain, and it is here, apparently, that most people stop. Because I’ve struggled in my life and I’ve accomplished quite a lot and I haven’t achieved the top of the mountain but, so be it.
Pretty good. Don’t give up. Don’t give up here. This is the essential part because now I can smell my goal and if I give up now, I become the bitter old man or old woman because I’ve given up when I knew I might have had a chance. Maybe not, but I might have had a chance to make it.
So I decide to push on. And this is exceptionally true at 68 years old or 70 years old or when you are old in the sense of your body, push on. Because you know what they say, as long as you can go on, get up, wash up, dress up, show up, push on. Slowly, you will climb the mountain. Up, up, up you go, and the ideal point of life, I think, at this part is that you’ll probably never reach the top of your mountain because you will transcend.
We have those three questions. Right? Why am I here? What’s my mission? What happens when I leave here?
So we don’t know the point of leaving here. We just see the goal. And as we get higher, the mist dissipates and we can see the goal is inside of me. I come to that point of great peace. Many people I read at least, that have lived fulfilling lives near the end of their lives are at great peace.
They’re not afraid to leave here. They’re not afraid to die. They’ve completed their mission as Saint Paul talks about. Right? So whatever your goal is, whatever your life is, give yourself a goal.
Take a chance on you. And you know what they say. You know what they say. Critical thinking is necessary to analyze what our goals are and to put them into practice, and critical thinking is great. You take care. God bless. Bye bye.