A
Anonymous
Guest
Despite setting goals in some of the key areas in my life – goals which are to the obvious benefit of my family – I have found that over the last few weekends I am totally stressed out in their company.
To extend the runway metaphor, I feel like a plane trying to take off when the wheels are pointing a different direction to the flight path, while half the passengers are still in the departure lounge with no idea that the plane has left.
I am mulling over two reasons for this.
Firstly – how good can we really be at identifying the essential goals that will make our own lives happier? Have we really got the insight to be able to self-analyse to the extent that we can hit on some set of keys to ultimate satisfaction, i.e. the very goals that will make our lives deeply satisfying? I’m not so sure.
I suspect that I have created a rickety wooden footbridge made out of a few goals, and am staking my life on it. Meanwhile, there is a fertile canyon concealed in the gloom nearby, which is the real me, and would take years to explore, if I ever even got to see it. Would I have the insight to be able to explore it and identify the things that really matter to me, and give me that deep, subterranean sense of rightness?
The other reason might be a more accessible problem: balance. For example, two of the main goals I am obsessing about at the moment are the acquisition of an investment property, and the redecoration of our home. Now, if we take the usual categories of human activity: spiritual, family, creativity (I can’t remember the rest of them at the moment), maybe it is perilous to crank up the volume in one or two of those areas, while leaving the remainder at the usual everyday volume. Maybe those other unconsidered areas get trampled on, and the consequent sensation is that significant areas of our lives are crushed by our excessive focus on one or two areas only. Thus we get the sensation of being pulled severely off centre?
Maybe humans need to either have something special going on in all areas of their lives at the same time, or else have everything on background cruise control in the subtle state of balance that has been fine tuning itself over all of our lives.
DFE
To extend the runway metaphor, I feel like a plane trying to take off when the wheels are pointing a different direction to the flight path, while half the passengers are still in the departure lounge with no idea that the plane has left.
I am mulling over two reasons for this.
Firstly – how good can we really be at identifying the essential goals that will make our own lives happier? Have we really got the insight to be able to self-analyse to the extent that we can hit on some set of keys to ultimate satisfaction, i.e. the very goals that will make our lives deeply satisfying? I’m not so sure.
I suspect that I have created a rickety wooden footbridge made out of a few goals, and am staking my life on it. Meanwhile, there is a fertile canyon concealed in the gloom nearby, which is the real me, and would take years to explore, if I ever even got to see it. Would I have the insight to be able to explore it and identify the things that really matter to me, and give me that deep, subterranean sense of rightness?
The other reason might be a more accessible problem: balance. For example, two of the main goals I am obsessing about at the moment are the acquisition of an investment property, and the redecoration of our home. Now, if we take the usual categories of human activity: spiritual, family, creativity (I can’t remember the rest of them at the moment), maybe it is perilous to crank up the volume in one or two of those areas, while leaving the remainder at the usual everyday volume. Maybe those other unconsidered areas get trampled on, and the consequent sensation is that significant areas of our lives are crushed by our excessive focus on one or two areas only. Thus we get the sensation of being pulled severely off centre?
Maybe humans need to either have something special going on in all areas of their lives at the same time, or else have everything on background cruise control in the subtle state of balance that has been fine tuning itself over all of our lives.
DFE