January 6, 2010

• Featured Grownups 10.1: Goals

  We’re almost a week into the new decade of the “teens”. Featured Grownups first topic of the new year “is on goals.  What do you hope to accomplish this year, and this decade?” As usual when writing for a prompt, I’m doing things a bit differently.

  My Personal and Universal Goals

  I am a human being. Like all human beings, I was born, and I’m living my life, and at some undetermined time in the future I will die. So far, this life has lasted over 55 years. A personal goal might be that now since I’ve reached the first half century, I’d like to be able to see the next. I would be really neat to say I lived through the (19) 50s and perhaps some of the (20) 50s too. But maybe it’s too early to be thinking so far into the future. The next half century for me is almost 50 years away!

  I have written that my most forseeable goal would be just to make it to next year. I live in a senior mobile home park, and as I was taking my daily two mile walk around the perimeter on the first day of 2010, I passed a few friends and neighbors, as usual, and along with my normal salutations, added a hearty “Happy New Year” as well. When you live in a place like this, you get used to seeing people regularly leave, and not because they just move away. As I greet folks who might even be approaching their century mark on this planet, I can’t help but think about mortality, and wonder if they’ll be around next year, or even next month. This might be considered somewhat morbid, but I think not. As we age, and as more and more of our friends and family pass from existence, we just can’t help it.

  The idea of “long range goals” tends to morph into a zenlike “living in the moment” sort of goal achievement. Shorter range goals are more the norm as we ourselves get into the “long range” years.

  A lot of my fellow “grownups” who are much older than I have chided me for calling myself “old”. “Hey, sonny,” one of these conversations might begin, “You’re pretty young to be complaining about age!” For someone in his or her 70s or 80s or 90s, thinking about being in the 50s again would be sort of like me aching to be back in my 20s or 30s.

  Most of my seeming “morbidity” when it comes to thinking about death is because so many people I have known are now gone, and most of the people with whom I now socialize are “getting up there” in years. Instead of making me feel as if I’m at death’s door myself, however, I tend to “live in the moment” more than I ever have before. I’ve even declared that my 50s are my best decade “so far”. I’ve live a pretty full book of life, with many amazing chapters, and I’m forever looking forward to turning the next page, and the next.

  My personal goals, then, are somewhat simple. As I have repeatedly said about New Years’ resolutions, they are to maintain my health, keep above the poverty line in my wealth, and attempt to be as creative and inspriational in my deeds as is humanly possible. I welcome new friendships and experiences, and on the other hand, I cherish the soft and comfortable routines I’ve developed over the first half century of my life. There were lots of changes in my last year, and I do hope that perhaps I don’t have as many changes this year, but I’ll take each day as it comes, looking forward to not only the sunrise (which occurs after I wake up!) but to the wonderful sunsets, and to the succeeding sunrises of our tomorrows.

  I pray for humankind as always, and send all the postive energy I can summon to his disposal. My universal goals are for peace, harmony, and love amongst my brothers and sisters. Each decade might seem to be more hectic and full of change than the one which preceded it, but as a student of history, I know that there have always been pretty much the same problems, and “technology” has been just as daunting for previous generations as they are for the present one. Communication might be quicker, so the spreading of both truth and lies is faster than previously. However, when you think about it, most of the people of the generations who lived prior to the printing press couldn’t even read, so the invention of the printing press must have been, to their generation, as awe inspiring as the computer was to mine. The generation who witnessed the inventions of automobiles and airplanes, some of whom are still around, must really have thought that the world was changing ridiculously fast during those times. And who knows what is around the bend, as we set our “goals” even now? There might be unforseen “goal breakers” abounding. The trick is not to worry too much about what happens, but to fashion our lives and modify our personal goals to conform to the world we live in. “Roll with the punches”, as it were.

  I’ve said and written before, and I’m sure I will say and write again, until that time that I physically cannot do so, that the internet affords humankind with the ability “right now” to spread love, a sense of purpose, and tolerance around the world. We can get to know our “neighbor” quite well, whether he lives next door or around the world, with the tools already in place. In fact, Xanga is one of those tools. We bloggers constantly meet new folks and share in their dreams, as we share our own.

  Let us attempt to share our personal and universal goals together, in the coming year, and in the coming decade, for as long as we exist.

  • 7:46 pm
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