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comment by user-inactivated
user-inactivated  ·  3179 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: How to become a resilient, hard-working person?

    I also got rid of any real goals. At this point I have this idea in my head, a vision of the thing I'm trying to build and do.

Which is the definition of a goal, is it not?

    So long as you can find and hold on to that, the rest will take care of itself.

That's quite a determenistic approach, is it not? I don't believe things will just take care of themselves: it never happens, no matter how much we might wish for it.





Isherwood  ·  3179 days ago  ·  link  ·  

On the first point, maybe, but to me it feels a lot less rigid. The thing I'm building is always changing and I'm never quite done with it. The goals I have are a lot more tangible and have much clearer end times.

On the second point, to a degree, yes it is. But it's also my acknowledgement that I can't control every single thing that happens in my life. The things I care about, the things I'm setting out to do, I focus on those and make them happen. The rest, all the other parts of life, I could try to control those or I could just let them happen and react to the best of my abilities.

Things always take care of themselves, they did before you were born and they will after you die, but that doesn't mean they resolve in a way that's best for you.

user-inactivated  ·  3178 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    Things always take care of themselves, they did before you were born and they will after you die, but that doesn't mean they resolve in a way that's best for you.

Perhaps. Isn't the point of work - any work - to bring order into the chaos, however? All we do, we do to construct our lives in the way we see most fitting. To say that things ought to move in their own way is to deny the worth of the work that could be done against it. I'm not to say that we must be most controlling of every aspect of our lives - indeed, bad things will happen regardless, probably more often when we're worried - but leaving yourself solely on reaction seems like a victimization of yourself.

Yes, you could concentrate on one part of your life and accept whatever happens in others, but would that still be the life you want to have? Isn't the whole point of doing stuff to bring to oneself what you want most?