It might not be polite of me to do this, but I do it quite often. I simply ask people "What's your plan? Your life plan?" as if the question is simple, something they should know off the top of their heads. Why do I do this? Maybe because I'm curious, maybe because I tend to see something in people's eyes, that look of "It's Monday again isn't it?" that no matter how much they try, they really can't hide.
We all need a goal
We all do, and it almost doesn't matter at what stage in life you are in honestly. If you have nothing to strive for, if you have no target in sight, it's not only easy to stray away from the good path so to speak, but more importantly, it's very easy to find yourself depressed, as silly as it might seem.
At this point it's somewhat cliche, and maybe because of this very reason, people tend to discard the advice all together as cheap wisdom. But the whole idea that it's about the journey and not the destination is very, very true.
A short digression to make my point...
The concept of value
The very idea of worth is born from effort. If something was easily given to us, it's very likely we won't appreciate it much, and that is not necessarily because we are ingrates, or idiots, but because we've been programmed for millennia to think this way.
It's somewhat hard to imagine a past of scarcity, of extreme scarcity, but it was not that long ago that men had to struggle for absolutely everything. It made sense that in a feudal system, the most valuable things were also the ones that required the most effort, being that effort, the hunt, the harvest, etc, the way to establish value to begin with it, and this is long before any idea resembling money was even discussed.
How does this apply to life?
Well it seems apparent to me, natural even, that the system we've used for so long still echoes subconsciously within us. We not only need the grind, the struggle to appreciate what we have, what we do, but we also need a clear reason why we are grinding away.
In my opinion what goals we set are not as important, as actually having them. This is to say that in the end, we are only obligated to ourselves to find that completeness that nobody else can truly give us, and it must come from within us to begin with.
To go back to how I started this awkward post of mine. Why do I ask this question to people? It's certainly not because I'm putting out a feeler for ideas, not at all. I actually do it, because I wonder if there are people out there walking the road of life without ever questioning why they are doing so. If they are working a job, simply because that's what they are supposed to do and for no other reason whatsoever.
Sadly, there's been times when I've stumbled across someone who not only cannot give me an answer, but feels uncomfortable with the very question, as if I've stepped in their emotional land mines. Still, I don't learn my lesson and that's probably because I refuse to accept such existence, and I know fully well that I'm in the wrong here.
Maybe I'm too idealistic in this front, and maybe I imagine how I would feel if someone asked me this very question in a hypothetical existence where I never question anything. I think I would feel grateful for the challenge, but then again my bias here is obvious.
I still stand by this personal truth, and I'm sorry to impose it on others, but I see nothing negative to derive from it at all.
We all need a plan...
