Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Goal? What Goal?

Almost all the motivational speakers and those management big guns often use this word call ‘Goal’. Personal goal, professional goal, spiritual goal, materialistic goal, blah goal, blah blah goal. Is it really important to have a goal? Is it so that all what education does is to enable a person to define a goal and spend the rest of the life in chasing the goal?

What if the person changes his mind in between and identifies and new goal in an almost opposite direction? Will he have to run back the distance he already covered? Is that what is called unlearning?

And what if the person attains the goal at a certain age? What does he do with the rest of his life? Identify another goal and run behind that? Or should he be setting another goal even before achieving the first goal? What if he has no further goals? Which direction should he move forward?

To begin with why do we need a goal in the first place? Frankly do we all have goals? I mean fixed goals and we wake up everyday devising strategies / tactics in getting closer to that goal, and every night analysing how well the strategy worked in moving towards the goal. Are we becoming a scientific calculator?

What if I don’t have a goal? Do I not have the right to live and enjoy my life? Will I be sidelined and be tagged as an aimless vagabond? Exactly.

Me thinks: we set up goals only to please everyone else other than us, I mean the real us.
We can’t have fixed goals. We will have short term goals the duration of which gets varied from a few seconds to a few years.

So is it important to have a goal? - No.
Can we have multiple goals? - Ofcourse
Can we live without a goal? – Yes
Can we change our goals in between? – Absolutely. Welcome to the club.

It is very easy to ask questions. Don’t believe me?

2 comments:

Balachandran V said...

You have touched upon a unique subject. Like you said, blah blah goal. But when you have lived as long as I did, that is, 53 years and look back - sometimes I wish I had a goal. I am one of those who never had a goal. I remember my mother complaining to my aunt - i was 20 year old then - 'He has no ambitions'. I replied - 'Wrong. I have ambitions but am not ambitious'. I felt quite smug and smart at my retort. To me,as a young man, there was only one idea for future. I should be independent. I didn't want to BECOME anything. And i haven't. But, like you said, sometimes it is better to BECOME someone, for the sake of others. So, in retrospective -

Is it important to have a goal? Yes, at least a sense of direction.
2. Can we have multiple goals? - Of course, but you have every right to decide to achieve them or not.
3.Can we live without a goal? – Yes, but living amidst our society, it is stressful not to have a goal. If you can, go ahead, and damn the goal.

4. Can we change our goals in between? – Absolutely. Yessir!

Say Hi to a fellow vagabond!

Unknown said...

Thanks for the comment.

But this world has so much to offer that having a goal means giving up a lot of other things during the pursuit of that goal, while not having a goal may not help us each somewhere, but we could enjoy the aimless travel. Well gibberish may be. But yes, I do consider your advice - having a goal is not really bad as I thought ;-)