Meaning of Life is Achieving Goals

I find it hard to tell you
‘Cos I find it hard to take
When people run in circles
It’s a very, very
Mad World

“Mad World”, Roland Orzabal

I have no idea what I’m doing here.

That’s my great philosophical conclusion. Really. I have thought long and hard about the meaning of existence and higher upper goals and that’s the best I could come up with.

Soldiers in training, fanatic sports fans and enthusiastic business entrepaneurs all have something in common. To the outside observer it seems as if they have found the meaning for life, at least for the meanwhile, and they are happy and content. They are indeed full of motivation and fighting spirit, but after some contemplation I realized that they don’t know the meaning of life either. They’re just passing time.

Perhaps there are some truly unique ones who truly know, and I mean “know”, not “think” and not even “convinced”. Most chances are those sons of bitches are currently living in a cave in the Himalayan mountain range, sitting with their legs crossed and their eyes closed, and have no intention at all to tell us what they know. And so it turns out that most of us, no matter how hard we tried to convince ourselves, are being eaten by doubt on a daily basis. Even the people who at first glance look like they have found a distinct direction, have problems falling asleep at night because of the compromises they made.

So how do we fill our lives with purpose? Goals.

Once upon a time, goals were collective. Everyone around you wanted the same thing, and that’s why you knew it was OK to want it.

My grandparents were promised a vision of a new country in the land of Israel. My parents were promised ideas of free love. In the eighties, everyone was promised they will be happy ever after, once they make their first million.

I was promised nothing. My generation has no pretentions to change the world or to become noble people. Our collective goal is just to live. In fact, it is to live well. And it seems the search for personal hapiness is a legitimate goal for one’s life these days. Because of this situation our generation is referred to as being confused or lost. It’s called the X-generation or Y-Generation – I get confused – after the mathematical value whose value needs to be found.

The problem with being human is that whenever we manage to accomplish our goals we get bored. We know this boredom is a luxury, and this can be confirmed by any survivor of a great war, but knowing that makes no difference to us. We get used to our new situation and come up with new goals. And somehow, we manage to convince ourselves that this time, those goals are our true path to happiness.

Why does this vicious cycle keep turning? This is where the void comes into our lives. You can think of the void as a bubble in which we keep all our problems in life. We feel that it has a certain volume, and indeed there are periods of our life with more or less problems than others. However, once we pull one of these problems away from the bubble – for example, by buying that jeans we have been obsessing about – the rest of our problems inflate and fill the rest of the bubble.

If you accept the theory of the problem bubble, you understand we will never be truly happy. It does not matter, we are still goal-oriented. We do everything for this satisfaction, which can last even a few years, of accomplishing a goal. Some people find satisfaction in the search for the best partner to share their life with. Others fill their day with one thing only, like sports, a job or academic work. And some just perpetually contemplate how much they would want to have more – more money, more properties, more cars, more electronic appliances with more features or more collectors’ stamps.

I myself am against life long goals, which turn in time into chronic addictions. Compared to all those addicts, I’m in good shape. Give me a few months, a few days of true addiction every once in a while, that’s the true taste of life for me.
For the past year, I’ve had no goals. I was on auto-pilot, and every day looked like the day before it. But as of now, I grabbed the controls; I have some current goals. They currently give my life meaning. I know they would only disappear, accomplished or not, and be replaced by other goals.

I’ve found the meaning for my life, at least for the meanwhile. Have you?