Purposeful Aimlessness

While my parents were unusual in many ways, their attitude toward planning for the future was typical of the average American. Work hard for decades, save, and plan for your retirement.

My father retired relatively early in his life due to stress related health problems. As he waited for my mother to retire, he built a three bedroom house on five acres of land, intending to live there for the rest of his life. He bought a large RV so he and my mother could go on long road trips together after she stopped working. And then he waited for her.

By the time my mother retired, his health issues had gotten much worse. Medical science knew little about Alzheimer’s Disease then, so by the time my father’s condition became apparent, he was already experiencing later symptoms of the disease. Memory loss, confusion, paranoia, and anger became common occurrences in his daily life. Eventually he was admitted to the Veteran’s Hospital, where he lived the rest of his life in a confused state. When I would go to visit him, I would inevitably find him looking out the window, reliving his younger years. He would talk about baling hay and irrigating fields, the whole time wondering who I was.

In the meantime, my mother found herself with five acres of land and a three bedroom house to take care of. Along with a giant RV and nowhere to go. She sold everything and bought a small mobile home with a tiny yard and lived there for the rest of her life.

The interesting thing is that in the last years of her life, having sold everything she had worked so hard to gather, I think she was the happiest she had ever been. Maybe she had discovered the secret of just living. Not worrying about acquiring more things, but just enjoying the days as they came and went. She had lost the desire to achieve.

We are goal oriented in our culture. We are always working toward something. The next certification, the next degree, the next promotion. A bigger house in a better neighborhood with a bigger car to put in the big garage. We look forward to the time we can retire and begin living our life and we spend the present planning for that future time. In doing this, we aren’t aware that our life is moving by without us.

In this goal oriented way of living, we pick a goal, losing ten pounds, for example. We then make a plan. Often, this plan is not sustainable over a long period. It may be a harsh workout regimen or a diet that is impossible to stick with over time and probably not very healthy at that. Then we torture ourselves until we either lose that ten pounds or give up, disgusted with ourselves and our inability to meet our goals. Either way, we live our life based on some future date when we finally achieve that goal.

If we live with purposeful aimlessness instead, we focus on living in the present moment completely and passionately. Rather than trying to lose ten pounds, we immerse ourself in a healthy lifestyle. We learn and grow and incorporate what we have learned into our present day living. We have no ideal, no goal we are constantly striving for. We just live, learn, and grow in each moment of each day. Training for the sake of training and living for the sake of living. In this way, we lose that extra weight, but we do it in a way that is life affirming and fills us with passion and joy rather than shame and defeat.

Some of the most beautiful stories from the Hindu tradition are the ones about the monkey god Hanuman. Hanuman wasn’t always a god. At one time he was just a monkey who fell in love with Ram and Sita, the incarnations of deity. It was never his goal to become a god. Hanuman had no goals. His only desire, his only passion, was to serve Ram and Sita. He completely immersed himself in them and spent every moment of his life in service to his great, passionate love. His immersion was so complete, he eventually became what he so loved. He became deity himself.

You might call this obsession and isn’t obsession unhealthy? Yes, obsession with a goal can be unhealthy. Obsessing about weight loss at the cost of your overall health, or obsessing over a promotion at the cost of your relationships, or obsessing over becoming something you believe you are not, that is unhealthy.

You may say not planning for the future is dangerous, but my parent’s story would suggest that planning for the future without living for today is a big gamble that is easily lost. I’m not suggesting we shouldn’t plan for the future, but one of the big lessons we have learned from this pandemic is that we must live for today. The future will never come, the past is already gone, and the present is constantly slipping away. We must grab hold of each moment and live it fully because, for all our planning, we never know how things will change and what will happen next.

So instead of working for the day when you can become a musician, immerse yourself in music and BE a musician. Or an artist or an engineer. Whatever your passion is, learn more about it every day, grow in it every day. Don’t wait for some future time to be what you love. Stop striving and just be.