As in, why are we here?
I know, that’s a far piece from writing about my modest misadventures on Match.com. (For a philosophical question on that thread, you could visit What do women want in a man). But that, what is the goal of life, is what has been coming up for me this week. I don’t know why it suddenly started to bother me. Reading about setting goals for this blog, I discovered that I didn’t have those either. And somewhere in there I realized I wasn’t sure what is the goal of my life!
There Seems to be Confusion in America in General
I asked one of my colleagues yesterday, and a couple of people I met in town here, and the consensus of the average American seems to say the goal of life is:
To be happy. Some elaborations on that appear in at Quora.com
We All Want to Be Happy, But What Does that Look Like?
I would like to be happy. But what does that look like? I feel like my teaching work is meaningful, so that is something. And the truth is, I am really grateful for the friends and family I have at this time. But there’s something inside me that isn’t quite in balance … I think it’s a kind of psychic wound.
It traces back to my divorce, and before the divorce, my childhood, and it’s touched on in the self-help books I’ve been reading, including Adult Survivors of Toxic Family Members and Breakup Bootcamp. These books led to an Ah-Ha Moment:
I Don’t Trust People Anymore …
This is hard to accept. I now find I sometimes don’t want to trust other people, or the world around me. Everything seems to be beautiful, these days, at least on the surface. But I’m worried that in a flash it will all go away or go wrong.
Today, I said to a friend I thought I had PTSD from all the years I was with Leo. And now, as that marriage fades in the distance, I can’t always put my finger on what happened to me that gave me these wounds.
We Were Working on Looking Good, But that Doesn’t Make You Happy
There’s another aspect. There’s this construct that back in the day we, the Brands et al., were working on things like, “of course we have the best Italian food,” and “I never pay retail for anything,” and “I’ve been all over the world on my own dime with children,” and “we are incredibly well read around here.” This was what I used to think of as being happy. But it isn’t.
These are things that are sources of pride. They are like a patrimony. When I talk about our family’s passions to outsiders, they (generally) don’t get it. So I stopped telling anyone. If doing these things were our goals in themselves, I think these goals let us down.
Happiness is Perhaps Our Most Important Goal
And I come back to what I’ve been told this week. What is the goal of life? The goal is to be happy. But I think many people are not happy. I have long been one of those people. Are we failures for this? I so want to be happy.
Personally I tend to think being happy depends on doing the right thing. So, if you want to be happy, you have to do the right thing. Right?
It seems I have selected a minority view.
I Do Believe that Doing the Right Thing Makes You Happy
On that “right thing” thesis: I’ve been taught that, for many problems, the answer is to do what’s right for you, because what’s right for you is actually what’s right for everyone involved.
A Couple of Blog Posts that Might Shed Light on This
Here is a post from Oberlo Online Selling Blog … not a very promising source, I know, but their list of 20 Life Goals is pretty solid. I checked and I’ve made five of the goals, am not interested in four of them … but the other 12, yes, I’m in. Check it out.
This post from Lifehack.com gives you 26 Ultimate Goals. And it’s pretty solid too … I liked, in particular, the developmental aspect of these goals. Part of what we are trying to do is become more ourselves. The mention of Bronnie Ware, a nurse who spent two years caring for hospice patients and learned what their life reflections were, is highly salient here. I had done some of these goals too — #9, Get ride of bad relationships, and #17 Take risks, yeah, got those … but others were quite intriguing. I’d never thought of defining values as a recovery technique before.
The Five Regrets of the Dying,, According to Bronnie Ware:
At times – hell, usually — it has been hard to do the right things to my standards. Is there any way to reconcile my idea that happiness is doing what’s right, and that happiness is being happy, an emotion or a sense, in the abstract? What is the goal of life, anyway? Does anyone have any definitive answers? I check Google. And I find this from the Bible, from Ecclesiastes:
Even the Bible Says You’re Supposed to Enjoy Life
10 I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. 11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet[a] no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. 12 I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. 13 That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God.”
I look at this with small wonder. The answer is: both my idea, doing the right thing, and my friends’ idea, being happy, are together in this text. Could it be that they are naturally coexisting? Or both necessary? Or something along those lines? I find this thought comforting.
Because if that’s the case, then my friends and I are both converging on the goal of life, both in our own direction and at our own pace. I think about this and am reminded of a song by Rob Thomas that Tiara played for me, a couple of weeks ago, which somewhat restates what is the goal of life, in another, different way, and I guess I’ll close this post with that. “Little Wonders” are what we see every day of what’s beautiful and good in our life, and if you’re on this world, you see them. Sometimes, I just need to remember to look.
