Goal!

5/15/09

Recently, I read a blog that talks about goal setting. It mentions creating a "bucket list" which I recently discovered is a list of all the things you want to do before you "kick the bucket". Whenever I hear about setting goals, I get a little knot in my stomach. Why is that?

I use goal setting techniques with the children I counsel (and the adults I worked with before). I even have it listed as one of the "questions of faith" posted in my blog! When I worked with pregnant moms, goal setting was a huge part of the job and I thought it was a wonderful way to empower the women to do for themselves and to take control over their own lives.

And yet, there is another part of me that wonders what this goal setting is really all about.
What is it supposed to be? It seems so linear, which doesn't work for my feminine tendacy to look at things as spirals or circles rather than straight lines. It seems so American. What do other cultures think of it?

Will we be very bitterly disappointed if all the things on our "bucket list" don't come to pass? What if we get sick in a way that precludes us from completing our goals? What if our goals are not realistic? Then, they would represent just another reason to feel disappointed or sorry for ourselves.

In a certain way, my "bucket list" consists of just one thing: to live each moment as aware and alive as possible-to appreciate all of the abundance, the myriad changes, the mystery that is.

By being open to possibilities, my life has already taken me on many journeys that I never would have dreamed of. They are better than that-they are life's essence rather than my ego steering me haphazardly toward whatever it thinks it should.

I think it is important to have values and right intentions, and to have a healthy curiosity as well as courage to walk whatever path presents itself to you. I also believe that we ultimately are nothing more than the choices we make.

And yet, life is a dance. It is our choices and life's happenings interacting with one another. This is where the circles and the grace joins the hopes and the goals in an ever constant act of balance.