The current hype would have us believe that setting goals, i.e. New Year's resolutions, is a good thing.
At the practical level, goals appear to be useful, after all how will we ever create something without first imagining how it will be and then working out the details?
The trap in this sort of thinking for me, I have noticed, has been when in an attempt to gain mastery of my life I adopt a "goal oriented" approach that eventually takes over my daily living.
This is the surest way for me to live out of the moment.
Living out of the moment serves as an escape from what seems to be the mundane. However, when I think about it, there is realization that the moment is all I ever have and when all my moments have passed, so has my life. I will have missed the whole incredible adventure.
This year I send out an invitation to you to put down your pre-determined personal measuring stick and try out the deliciousness of living one day at a time in the moment.
When focusing on this moment, you may find yourself more deeply engaged with your fellow travelers and even if they are clearly out of their moment, you can be with them.
Loneliness has been said to be the greatest plague suffered by humanity. Doing moment by moment living banishes loneliness by awakening my aliveness.
When fully alive I find that I have lost the capacity to be lonely and country western lyrics of "he/she done me wrong and now I am all alone with my memories" cease to speak to me. The information contained in these songs is the habitat where loneliness paces--in the "gone and done past" or the"never to get here future."
So what does all this have to do with not making New Year's Resolutions?
When I don't make them, I am not impelled to pursue them, have not set myself up for failure, and have cast myself headfirst into the now-ness of living. To live without goals is to live with your fingers placed lightly on the sweet reassuring pulse of your own life.
You may pass me one day this year on the road where I have pulled over to help a delicate Mayfly escape my car where it has gotten trapped. Mayflies live their whole life in one day, and that life would be better served outside the confines of my car. When I am aware of their stress, and not flying down a road to get somewhere else, I am joined with that small life in that moment. After the rescue I pull back on the road and I am smiling.
