It's the journey, right? Isn't that the cliche that we eventually end up at? The goal is the journey itself, which is a fine little mind-bender right out of the gate. When looking for purpose or meaning, it's not about a final destination or goal, but about the camino, if you will. I guess I captured that idea pretty well a month or so ago in the verse which says:
May you have a gentle road
Good friends along the way
Can I help you carry that load
Where we going anyway?
But I'm not ready to quite sum it up yet, as my brain has been tickled by the unexpected little knot of 'the goal is the journey', which seems like a contradiction. I realize that I'm playing with words and wanting them to fit into some kind of clever arrangement, but beyond that, I get a sense that there is some mysterious truth that is wanting to surface.
Just as an exercise, let me consider the hypothesis that it's ALL about the goal and the journey is irrelevant. You got to be driven, you got to succeed, you got to get there, put the blinders on, go go go. It's all about the goal, sunny, rainy, it's all about the goal, solo, hooked up, it's all about the goal, go go go goal. No time for reflection, no time for connection, to time for perception, it's all about the goal. (as an aside, it might be nice to actually have a goal to plug into this hypothesis, but if I could do that, I probably wouldn't be on this exercise anyway). Is that the problem, is it simply a case of not being able to formulate a goal that leads me to wonder about goals and journeys? Maybe the goal is to formulate a goal? Very possibly, but let's set that aside for a moment and return to the meandering.
Only there's no meandering in reaching the goal, it's a one way, pressing, non-distracted, non-distractable push toward the finish line (he said as he distractedly got up to go bring in the newspaper, an apt metaphor for my state of mind at the moment, which is the opposite of non-distracted). Or maybe it's just the ADD kicking in.... again :-) But I'm not putting myself down, just reporting on the ironies and amusements of my situation.
I just re-read what I have written thus far, and was reminded of that essay I wrote at the age of 17, when I was supposed to be taking a history test about American Foreign Policy. For some reason I didn't register that there was a test that day, so I was totally unprepared, hadn't done the reading. The teacher hands out the essay test and all around me, kids are feverishly writing their essays, while I was in some kind of thoughtful stupor, being turned off by their rushing pens and intent expressions.
I suppose I could have tried to fake it, use my rhetorical powers to try and at least pass the test (so to speak), but on this day, I just didn't have it in my to go in that direction. Something came over me and I began to write what turned out to be an early blog entry, I suppose. Instead of trying to bullshit my way into a C grade, I just wrote about what I was feeling, being a guy surrounded by intent faces and hurrying pens. And I got pretty fired up about it the longer that I wrote. I remember one passage of the paper in which I said something like, 'And why are they writing so fast? So they can get a good grade on the test, so they can get a good mark in the class so they can get into a good college so they can get a good job and MAKE A LOT OF FUCKING MONEY! I followed that up with, 'it makes me sick'
I do remember feeling exhilarated by the writing and the self-expression. My teacher was apparently not quite as impressed, as he gave me the well-deserved F on the test, as if I cared. The next day in school, I got a visit from the guidance counselor, who showed up in my homeroom, asked to have a word with me, and then asked me if everything was all right. I assured him that I was fine, and I probably asked him if he liked the paper. Flash forward 40 years, and my brother Mick discovered that paper while doing some cleaning at our mom's house and he's going to mail it to me as a memento of a different time. Only thing is, I haven't changed all that much.... or have I?
I do know that my essay was about the same thing I started with here, thinking about goals and in that case, rejecting the money goal, which is truly the elephant in the room when it comes to this culture, at least. We are so oriented to money here in the west. I don't know if it's a universal condition, but it's certainly a western one. And now with the benefit of 40 years perspective, I can see that my rebellious rejection of money as the end game has caused me to conflate it with any other more worthy goal which I might imagine for myself. I haven't changed much from that angry teenager who is rejecting his father's values as a way to define his own path. Even today, when I set out to think about goals, or the idea of goals, there was a shadow present, and it was the idea that money is the ultimate goal here, so what's the use of really trying to come up with a goal, when my soul still rebels at the money piece. Hmmmmmm I feel like I made some headway, and it looks like this:
It's time to stop conflating 'money' and my issues with it into every thought process about what I might hope to achieve. By now, I've proven the point that I'm not my father, and it's time to step out from under that shadow and that self- limiting way of looking at things. Money is not the goal, it might be just a part of the journey. Time to chemically remove it from the metaphysical equation and let some more light in. On three.... 1 2 3 and it's done. Let the sunshine in...
