I've previously postulated that pessimism is the secret to happiness.
I think another secret to happiness is not to make your goals too specific or arbitrary. I know that conventional wisdom is to make your goals specific, but I think unless the specificness has some particular purpose, you're just setting yourself up for disappointment.
This train of thought started awhile back when I read an article (linked to via some smug CFer or another) wherein a woman was convinced that she would have her children play with wooden toys only. (Incidentally, thanks to Google for re-finding that article for me with only msn lifestyle wooden toys plastic as keywords.) It occurred to me that if something meaningless like her children playing with plastic toys disappointed her, she would never be happy.
Then I thought of my family's xmas celebrations (yes, I am an atheist; no, my family is not). We used to have all these things that the grownups made us do. Let's all gather around the piano and sing xmas carols. Let's all share opłatek. Let's take a picture of all the kids lined up by height. We grew to not like those things, and people rebelled or opted out, which always disappointed one or more grownups. But as we got older and scattered far and wide and built our lives elsewhere with other people, they grew to be more appreciative that we were still all showing up. So instead of being disappointed that not every single person wanted to gather around the piano and sing carols, they were happy that everyone was there and more or less having a pleasant time.
It's not uncommon for people to set unnecessarily specific goals. "I'm going to be married by the time I'm 30" before you even know who you're going to marry. "I'm going to teach my son how to ride a bike" before you have any children. But why 30? Why a son and why a bike? What if you don't meet your soulmate until your 32nd birthday? What if your child is born with no legs? It's better to set goals like "I will only give my heart to people who are kind to me" or "I will teach any children I might have whatever I can." That way, you won't be taking a situation in which there is nothing wrong and defining it as a failure.
1 comment:
That "getting married before I'm 30" thing is a great example. When you're very young, you have no idea how many twists and turns your life will take, how unpredictable life is - and how ridiculous some of your goals are. The people I knew whose lives were full of those deadline-oriented goals all felt like failures, when really they were just living.
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