Well, last night I was home for my brother's 25th birthday party. Happy birthday Ben!! It was good to be home. I don't think I really feel at home any more in my house but it's still pretty comforting because of the people that are here. In conversation I found that one of my brother's roommates was just in a huge car accident. He showed us pictures of how a bus had literally run over his small compact car. It was amazing and it was very obvious that he was very thankful to still be alive. Then he said that when the accident was happening he thought to himself, "Is all there is?" He was hoping there would be more to his life than that.
Now none of the following is meant to judge him or his moment of dissatisfaction, rather it is my own personal analysis and me trying to grasp my reaction to such a phenomenon. Would I have thought that had it happened to me? Would I have been disappointed with my life? Then the basic questions come up in my head. Should one ever be dissatisfied with one's life? In a goal oriented life, it seems logical that one's life could be cut short of reaching one's next goal and then one would be dissatisfied with one's life. Frankly I can't see how that wouldn't occur, save three situations. All of these work out of the basic assumption that a happy life is one in which one accomplishes their goals. I realize this isn't totally true, but it's close in the society we live in. It certainly is a large part of what makes a happy life. Fulfilling goals gives one a sense of accomplishment. There are other things that make our lives fullfiling but for the sake of limiting my writing I'll focus only on accomplising life goals.
First being that one accomplishes a major life goal and then instantly as they are basking in the moment, they are killed. Then they would die with a total sense of satisfaction and completeness unless they had some other greater life goal still looming in their head. So logically this death would have to occur after a pretty significant life goal. Personally, I immediately abandon hope in this option because the chances of it happening are slim to none unless your biggest life goal involves a high chance of death. Maybe there's something to be said about such goals in life. Go out with a bang. That's it, my newest life goal is to sky dive naked without a parachute. The sheer exhilaration of plummeting nude towards the earth. I wonder if the wind speed would cause chafing? I joke.
The second situation allowing a satisfied life being the abandonment of all goals. I immediately think of extremely old people who feel they have reached their time in life and they stop setting goals. I assume this occurs. Perhaps my perception here is ignorantly concieved. However, even without the old person example, a person could feel that they've accomplished most of their goals in life and just stop setting goals or just live without goals in the first place. This kind of throws the subject into a state of purposeless limbo. Just floating through life until death comes. It seems rather impossible to me because you're always trying to do something whether it be eating something, taking your next breath, or read the next word in a book. I'm of course addressing large, important life goals. One probably wouldn't die and think, "Damn! I never did get to brush my teeth that one last time!" However, when the bus rolls over the person's car, if they've lived a goalless life, they won't be feeling regret for not accomplishing those lack of goals. The only regret they may feel is for living a life without goals. But why should they set goals if death will only come to rob them of the satisfaction of the unfullfilled goals in life? Perhaps that's human life, living a life chasing goals you may never even be able to complete. Well, I don't believe that. So I press on to my third situation.
This third point is of course the one I'm trying to legitimize so I'll take this little break in the action to explain where my inspiration comes from. Recently I went to a church leadership conference in Atlanta, Georgia called Catalyst. It was supposed to be a spiritual awakening for next generation church leaders. However, in my opinion, it was just the same old stuff wrapped in more hype. But still, I tried to take somthing away from it. The theme this year was Epic. The whole idea that history is an epic story and we are part of it. Or that our lives are epic tales and we should live like that. Live like our lives are really important and what not. The idea that I had the most trouble with was this idea of setting goals. They kept using epic stories and movies as examples. But I couldn't see the analogy. For instance, in Lord of the Rings, Frodo has a very clear goal. He's to destroy the ring. After he completes his goal he lives happily ever after and even sails into the west with the elves to a place we're left to assume is heavenly and blissful. How does this at all relate to our lives? What is my ultimate goal that upon accomplishment, I'll go to heaven? In my experience of life and death, this is not how things work. The people I know who have died did not do so after accomplishing some great achievement. So this whole concept frustrated me because it was the basis for the way of life they were encouraging. A, "keep your eyes on the prize" kind of life. Sure, this is a great mentality when trying to accomplish a goal, but is that a good mentality to carry through life? Sure, there's the scripture about running the race with your eyes set on the goal. Philippians 3:14 "I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus." But it never says what that goal is.
So there is a third situation one could live in so that upon death one would not be dissatisfied with not completing the goals of ones life. What if one were to live with this goal in mind, "My goal is to be alive right now." From a christian standpoint, or not even just a christian stanpoint (I hope all people live their lives to love other people), I would say the goal of a Christian life is to love other people. Love is not some far off goal that will be reached one day. Either you are doing it or you aren't at this very moment. There's no future or past about it. Sure you can love in the future and you may have loved in the past but the only thing you can do at this moment about it is either love someone or not. Now is the only moment that you are actually alive. So if your only goal in life is to be alive right now you can never fail until you are dead, but then you're dead anyway. This may seem like a meaningless existaence but I would actually argue that because now is the only moment that you are alive, that every other kind of existence is equally meaningless. Frankly, I think they are less meaningful because everyone gets so caught up in setting goals and plainning for the future that they forget that they are only alive right now and if they don't enjoy the moment they live in they will never be able to enjoy any moment.
Lets talk about direction for a little bit. When I talk about this life of one goal, I don't mean to just sit around doing nothing all of the time, just being happy to be alive, although that's possible. One can have direction in life. I can hear critics saying right now that this is just another name for goal setting but I see a critical distinction between the two. The distinction is that the man who sets goals in his life draws his personal worth fromt he completiion of these goals. If you really disagree with me, just think about all of the things in life that typically give people worth, graduation from high school or college, marrying, having kids, buying a house, getting a job, doing something. We are taught that our worth comes from doing these things. "Set goals in life and do them" we are told. The man who lives with the one goal of being alive but lives with direction in his life draws his worth from being who he is. Imagine that. Defining one's self by one's self! But what is this direction I speak of. Lets imagine a man who owns a boat. His goal in life is to be sailing. he doesn't neccesarily want to sail to any particular place, he just wants to be sailing. He wants to be a sailor. So he gets in his boat and sails. Now he has to choose a direction. So he decides that sailing to Jamaica would be fun. At sea a huge storm comes and destroys his boat. The man drowns in the storm. Now here is the distinction. As it becomes evident to the man that he will not survive the storm, he can feel regret and dissatisfaction, or he can feel accomplishment and self worth. He can think to himself, "Damn! I never got to Jamaica! I have failed." Or he can say "I sailed! What a great adventure! My life is complete!" That is the distinction.
Now one might think that the only difference between those two points of view are the man's dying thoughts but that simply is not the case. Having this single goal of being (or loving, which to me are the same thing but maybe more on that later) will affect one's whole life. For instance, suppose the man in sailing towards Jamaica, looks westward and sees the beautiful coasts of Cuba. He is intrigued. If the man's goal is simply to be sailing and just happens to be sailing to Jamaica, he won't have a single thought about turning to sail along the beautiful coasts of Cuba, exploring as he may. However, the man who's goal is to reach Jamaica, will see Cuba as a distraction and will be too caught up in his goal to enjoy the beautiful nature that surrounds him. Frankly, all of his decisions along the way will be with Jamaica always in mind and he will live in a constant state of being short of his goal. That's the problem with living for an ultimate destination, until you get there, you aren't there. So for most of your life, you are about something wich you cannot experience. The man who wishes only to be a sailor will be continuously complete in his journey. For no matter where he is in the sea, he is a sailor. Even if he never would reach Jamaica, he would still be complete as a sailor.
So I suppose this is extremely exsistential but I think it's a legitimate way of living and frankly, the only way to actually be happy. If I can't be happy in the moment I'm in, I'll never be happy, because I'll always be in the moment I'm in. Otherwise, what happens when you get to Jamaica? What will make you happy then?
