
Please bear with me while I traverse the painful road of cliched self-reflection. In many ways, this is necessary for myself (they do say that you have to write a hundred books of bad stuff before the good stuff starts coming out), albeit an action that is overdone like charred fish (black, stiff, crumbly, and quite frankly, distasteful.). As a graduating university student, life is, at least at this very instant, a momentous occasion that requires a certain amount of dramatic self-examination. A type of overpiped, personal spectacle that will, in few years, become a distant irrelevance, a stain on the past in need of brushing off, hastily, before anyone else witnesses this terrible moment of shame.
On Goals.
This is fairly obvious, but I consider goals to be an object - an entity? - that provides motivation, dedication, and momentum to your life. You may agree or disagree with me, but without goals, I believe a person wouldn’t be able to move forward; they are, in essence, an affirmation of life that allow you to know and feel with all rationality, “I am alive.”
Some goals are so close that they practically touch your nose; you need only reach out and it’s within your grasp. Some goals are so distant and ethereal that they are less a goal and more a dream. Some to the point where even the dream is but a wavering mist that exists, yet doesn’t exist. These occur when the distance between point A and B is so great that you can’t even imagine the proper road to take. It’s just something that hovers at the back of your mind … but doesn’t really come into play in your life.
I’ve recently stumbled upon a certain opportunity, no, a slim chance that may seem obvious to grab with all haste. Pondering on the guidelines and taking a glance at the prize, though, brings to bear a significant question I should have been asking myself years ago:
Just what the hell is my goal, anyway?
I am a Christian, one who is devoted to a certain religion and strives to achieve a better, higher ground in faith.
I claim the title of otaku, a 2D maniac-and-Japanophile who is fascinated with a dying culture.
I love to play games, but my skill brings to mind that of a shark attempting to type on a keyboard.
I pretend to be able to write, but my hours of writing compared to my hours of playing bring that into significant doubt.
I love to sketch, but the amount of time and effort I put into improving casts a suspicion on the amount of dedication I have.
In a few words, except for one thing, I have no idea what I am or what I want to do. My goal-less life is screaming at me to get a grip on something, anything, that will shove me forward, but I simply flail in indecision, moving neither forward, backwards, or even side to side. However, Reality (with a capital ‘R’) is shoving its ugly, alluring head into my face, and the resulting nosebleed is reminding me that unless I am willing to find something to dedicate myself to, nothing is going to change. I’ve been given all this education and experience … but I have no idea what to do with them. I receive either of the two, only to have them dribble out of my ears with nothing to apply them to.
Oh, there are things which I would certainly be able to dedicate myself to. Abstract things. Physical things. But neither my God nor my fiancee can make me take the step forward; only I have the ability to make that decision…and I certainly have to decide. Which path? Which road? What goal is it that I choose for myself?
I have often been told that we are blessed to have such freedom - and I agree, truly, that freedom - in as unpolitical sense as humanly possible - is a wonderful thing. But thinking about it, I would much rather be a slave to my dream than a free person who has no dream, and therefore achieves nothing.