Santiago, Chile
For many years I'd wandered without any real concrete direction. I could compare this to waiting in a rail road station. We've all had long lay-overs and find how terrible waste of a day they are. Well in essence I was wasting my life. I was putting off important steps in life such as finding a home, getting married and pursuing a career.
I've had some rather devestating setbacks in life and perhaps it was a type of shell shock. -Experiencing a severe earthquake (8.2) with numerous daily aftershocks gave me a perspective on that. Maybe it was even like being bucked off a horse repeatedly, getting one's breath knocked out time and time again. Anyway, there was a point at which I just stopped getting back in the saddle. Perhaps a certain amount of convelescing was necessary, but then the convelescing began to stretch out a bit.
Something miraculous occured. Some lady finally found me to her liking enough to marry me. Shock! Well this has really put a new perspective in life. Now I find myself gazing at the horizon, trying to figure out how to have a home and a career too. Suddenly It's ocurred to me that I've been living more or less without purpose. So many of my dreams had been smashed and somehow I'd just stopped dreaming.
Proverbs 29:18 Where there is no vision, the people perish...
Anyway, I found that making goals is absolutely essential to a happy life. It's the difference between your favourite meal prepared without any seasoning or the same dish prepared with a correct porportion of spices.
OK, I'm not going to say something stupid like finding a purpose outside of living for God is as important. I am going to say that God has created us to live and enjoy living. The best metafore I can come up with is comparing it to a well adjusted family. Ideally your children will take into consideration your desires for their life, but hopefully your desires for their life won't inhibit them from discovering harmless personal pursuits.
Anyway, quite suddenly I've rediscovered the joy of making achievable goals and discovering their limits. I suppose, -and this is because I also do a bit of sailing, -it was like I was out on the water without aim. This is an easy way to get lost (which isn't always a bad thing) and find yourself in for more than you're prepared for. Anyway, just because the wind and currents aren't going the direction you want doesn't mean you can't get there. If your destination is due west, but the wind is coming from due west, you can spend a lot of time tacking, zig-zagging with the bow of your boat pointed north-west and south-west. You can even find yourself fighting a current and needing to wait until the tides change or needing to plot a course outside of the current. A squal can come up and force you to strike all sails or you can be becalmed with all your canvas up, but not budging an inch, -except for the backwards direction an unfavourable current could be taking you. To get to a reasonable destination just takes a good combination of skill, patience and some providence.
So what happens if you find a goal is unreasonable? Find another goal. If you're out sailing, and find that no matter how hard you try, you're just not going to make your original destination in the time you've allowed, then it's time find another destination; you can't stay out on the water without direction indefinetly. If someone stomps on your dreams and causes enormous damage, don't give up, but put things back on the rails and get underway again.
