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I get it, setting a life goal is important. No captain allows their ship to wander the oceans without a harbour in mind. Advice for setting life goals abounds, from the Internet, newspapers, and acquaintances. Everyone has something to say when it comes to choosing a goal for one’s life. I figured I would throw in my $0.02.
Growing up, I had many, many dreams. Be an engineer (that was particularly short-lived even though I am an Asian), run a successful company, become a famous person, have enough cash to boil eggs (yeah I was wild back then), be happy. My aspiration would change as often as my heart beat. Just like my favourite food of the week, nothing ever stayed for too long.
When I was older, things became slightly clearer. I would ask myself what I wanted out of this life, and my answers wouldn’t change too much or too often. However, the one thing I still didn’t do was probe further. I seldom examined the dreams: how feasible they were, what compelled me to consider them, and how seriously I wanted them. I was clearer on what I wanted but made no attempt to determine the how and the why. A guiding framework was missing, I had no yardstick to measure my goals against. My dreams remained nebulous: hazy, unquestioned, superficial.
Around 18 months ago, I was strolling on Quora when someone dropped this gem (non-verbatim since I can’t remember the author nor the exact wording):
Your ultimate goal in life shouldn’t be something people can be born with.
Something in me twitched. It was like someone strapped my mind with a bag of C4 and pressed “Detonate.”
What the author means, I believe, is that whatever you want to get out of this life, it shouldn’t be something people can automatically possess upon birth.
The obvious examples are money and fame. Heaps of infants are rich and/or famous, like the children of Kanye West, Donald Trump, and Prince William. From the moment of birth (or if we really want to get tedious, that of conception), they were conferred wealth and celebrity status. They didn’t work a single minute to get those. No pain, much gain.
And happiness too. Not all babies are born happy, but some definitely are. A number of infants have the default mental state of joy. Think about everyone you have ever interacted with, children and adults alike. Are at least some of them always filled with joy, bliss, and contentment? To them, happiness is intrinsic and unless something unpleasant happens, they will stay happy. That’s enough to disqualify happiness as your ultimate life goal, along with money, fame and other things people can be born with.
The author went on to justify his seemingly preposterous claim. He asked: Do you really want to spend every living moment of the one life you have chasing something another person can have the moment they are born? Would you be satisfied to die pursuing this goal?
That hit my guts. Hard.
I began to question every goal I have ever harboured, using this principle as a filter. It soon became clear, those goals I had had that people could be born with, I never held onto them for too long. Something wasn’t right. Those goals lacked depth, meaning, substance. They were merely summer flings – carefree, intoxicating, ephemeral. My goals were not that great – I mean, babies can have them. They could not have failed to devalue the significance of my life. If I were to die tomorrow, I would regret my choice tonight.
In stark contrast, the dreams that stayed required time, discipline and dedication, qualities an adult might not have, let alone an infant. Become the best version of myself, write a captivating novel, transform the lives of others, they demand physical and mental exertion to achieve. Funny enough, they are the ones that stick. Setting these life goals, I sense a deeper sense of accomplishment. I guess I find pleasure in the knowledge that my accomplishments will be unique, that nobody else could have done what I have set out to do. If my corpse was lowered into the ground tomorrow, I’d greet Hades with a smile, knowing my attempt at success would be incomparable. In every sense of the verb, I own my goal.
The second best thing is, these goals give me meaning even if I fail, because I will have tried something that demands my abilities to accomplish. I have given my best to achieve something significant. Failing doesn’t seem so bad. The best thing is, it seems that if I stay on this path, money, fame and happiness will take care of themselves. I have not taken that many steps but it has been true so far. I worry about the big stuff and let the small stuff sort themselves out. In particular, not obsessing over happiness has made me feel more fulfilled which, in my book, is vastly superior to feeling happy. So there’s that.
I fully expect my life goal to change in the next couple of years and have no qualms about that. In fact, I’d be surprised if it didn’t. Turbulent twenties is real, people. Yet, I know one thing for sure: what I choose to pursue will require me to toil and endure. And I am prepared, even pumped to welcome the challenge. I have learned to revel in hardship. In the end, I will have become a better person and the world will have become a better place. In the end, it will be worth it.
Just like Tim O’Reilly once said:
Pursue something so important that even if you fail, the world is better off with you having tried.
Life is fleeting. Your magnum opus really shouldn’t be something people can be born with.
Words strung together 