It took me too long to realize that people need overarching goals in life to be happy. I never thought it could be that simple. In the end, the answer to all of our troubles is always the simple one. Eat less, move more, spend more time in nature, own less possessions, call your mom, have a goal. The keys to enlightenment.
I didn't think too deeply about goals most of my life. I enjoyed a hippie like lifestyle where I went happily along with the tide of life. I didn't actively set goals, I just went where life took me. Sometimes it was along the path of my husband's goals, he was always been much better at understanding what he wanted. My laissez fair life was going swimmingly until I was cornered into a life altering purchasing decision, a home. Buying a home in the most expensive market in the world created a crisis within me.
My easy going existence was no longer cutting it with the new pressures of domesticity. I was lost. I was restless, I couldn't face the fact that swimming through life as I've done before was over. I couldn't go where life takes to me because my life reached that pinnacle - a mortgage. Life took me to a 30 year commitment to a townhouse in North Vancouver. There will be no more spontaneity, no more "fuck it, let's move to another country", no more quitting work without a backup plan.
I threw myself into a job that I thought was providing me purpose, because I had no purpose otherwise. Like everyone else I thought it was the external factors that were affecting me. I was looking for fulfillment working for someone else spending my time doing something existentially useless and damaging to the planet. Society dictates that you must work a job you don't like to afford a home that's too big for you. I never questioned my unhappiness
My life was turned upside down when I was asked "What do you want to do in your life?". I thought I couldn't think such blasphemous thoughts when I owed 30 years of my life to a bank. Is there something more that I could be doing here? Is there something I could do in addition to having to having a mortgage that added fulfillment to me? Yes. It was a light switch. Click. I could live with a purpose. Click. I don't need to uproot my life in order to find joy in life. All I had to do was set a goal. It is indeed that simple.
