Goals in life

Being in university makes the idea of life goals inescapable. I have been told to think of where I want to be after school, in five years, when to have kids and all these things that make life into something other than just a series of experiences.

I don’t blame the school, because this obsession with goals is everywhere, it’s in the ads we watch that tell use to save early for retirement, it’s in the places we vacation – the places we would live if only…

I hate this way of living because it makes life into a checklist. Success, i.e. a good life, is determined by how many of the boxes are checked.

Now this may be ok for some people, in fact some may thrive in this environment just like the hot-acid eaters which live near the geysers on the ocean floor. But for those not adapted to such a preordained way of life, people like myself for instance, goals are rather destructive.

I have, recently, been making a point of figuring out what I like in life. The ever-presence of goals has made wonder what I might want in life, what my own goals may even look like. The major benefit I see in this thinking is that it forces young people like me to think about life as an eighty-or-so year thing. This is something sorely lacking among millennials.

But, aside from realizing that life is only short for the people who have very little left, goals offer not much. Human life is so brutally dynamic that I have no fucking clue what I want to do in ten years, except for writing.

Like, I don’t know where I want to live, where I want to work or who I want to live with for the rest of my life. And these things change, people seem closer to you at some points than others, places lose their pull the longer you spend
away from them and besides, all you need to write is a laptop.

When I speak of how dynamic human life is, I mean people change and so not much is solid in our lives. That’s why my goal to find a wife, a best friend who will be there for me is probably the one that occupies my mind the most. (I never said I didn’t have goals, just that our obsession with them is stupid)

But, I think part of the problem is that I have only just recently realized who I really am. I didn’t know what even to attach goals to, within my interests, until recently, I was that devoid of self-fulfillment.

I don’t know, as a result, what people would like in me. Like, it shocks me to think that there is someone out there who would actually want to spend enough time with me to become my wife, but that’s probably something unrelated to this discussion.

I guess what I want in life, is to be able to express my love. I have love inside me, I love writing and there’s even a few people I truly love. So, I just want to keep the love flowing I guess.

Clay