01.01.10
A Lack of Resolve
For three years now, a friend of mine has been after me to write a New Year’s resolution. But he doesn’t want just a resolution, he wants a goal from me, a statement of intent, a to-do list for self realization.
He writes a goal for himself every year, tracks it and reports on the results when the year is done. He has annual goals and life goals. And every year he goes a month or so at the beginning of the year expressing his disappointment at my inability to draw my own life into such sharp relief. At the end of each year he laments that I have let another unplanned, unfocused year pass by.
I don’t disagree that having a life goal and mission would allow me to accomplish greater things and perhaps even draw greater satisfaction from life. But my problem is, and has always been, that the decision of what is important enough to commit my life to seems to demand the prerequisite of knowing what is important in life. And I just haven’t figured that out yet. What if I would commit my life to the wrong thing? Wouldn’t that be terrible?
So instead of taking a chance on committing to the wrong goal, I commit to none — and go about being living proof of the John Lennon quotation, “Life is what happens when you are busy doing something else.”
But like John Lennon, my life is not without accomplishment. Though I haven’t changed the face of world culture as he did (yet anyway), I have created a life for myself that would have been beyond my dreams graduating from college. I write for a living — I’m deeply involved in my passion of music. My job also takes me outdoors a great deal — and I get to run a kids’ camp during the summer. I have three boys, an unbelievable wife, and live in a great community where I have met a lot of fantastic people. All of this is without benefit of life goals.
The funny thing is if I would have set life goals for myself — these things would have been key. I look at Ed Boyce, the guy who founded Innsbrook, and wonder if our 8,000-acre community was part of a grand plan he had. Some how I doubt it. And yet he has accomplished so much and has affected so many lives in a profound way.
I have a theory. Perhaps achievement goals really aren’t what are important. I have tossed around on the tide like flotsam and jetsam without a tiller and still have been gently deposited on the island of my dreams. The only thing I can figure might have guided my course is that I have always done the things I love and have done them as well as I could. I think there is probably something to the idea that when you focus on what you love and are interested in, those things are drawn to you.
So perhaps by not being always focused on distant goals, I was better able to see what was there in front of me, not missing opportunities. Often the heart is a better guide for living in the present than the mind.
So here I sit, lack of resolve wholly intact. And I am facing the prospect of breaking the news to my friend that once again, I am without a New Year goal.
But perhaps this year I can find a little red meat to throw him (or baked quinoa in my case). I think the resolutions that make real sense are those that help us live better in the present — exercising, eating well, sleeping more, spending time with those I love, being outside, laughing, writing, discussing and reading.
I have come to the conclusion that my boat seems to work well without my hand on the tiller so I’m content to leave my destination unknown. But living well could provide a fresh set of sails to make the trip that much better.