Come alive, be your best and brightest
Matt Loughran
Random Thoughts
What is your goal in life?
That was a question that haunted me in my last years of Notre Dame and even for the last couple of years since I graduated. I never had an answer. I never had a goal.
I spoke with a friend of mine the other day who is absolutely killing herself to get all of her work done in the time that she has between Saturday sunsets. There are only 168 hours in a week. She must be awake and using nearly 147 of them for her activities. She is working what I know to be at least a 25-hour-a-week job, is a full-time student and is studying for placement exams into a professional school. Now, if this were anyone else that I know, I would have watched for the steam to begin pouring out of her ears and making that annoying whistling sound like in a cartoon.
But this person is usually such a workhorse that she would do all of that and still look for more things to fill up her time. Why? Because she has a goal. That is not to say that you have to plan out everything that you want to do with yourself for all of the rest of your life. Such a planned existence is a soulless existence that would never be conducive to creativity on any level. It also does not mean that whatever you set as your goal needs to remain your goal throughout your life. When we are young we set our goals too high and are disappointed when we fall short. It is easier to set goals so lofty that they are unattainable or not to set goals at all when you are in college. You live a rather sheltered life that allows you to dream and to consider great things without applying it to your life.
After graduation I set myself the goal of visiting all 50 states in 12 months. I did it, but at the expense of some of the quality sights that I might have been able to better appreciate had I spent more time and only seen a portion of the country.
Then, I had nothing. I lived with my mother and drifted through life at a snail's pace. I was still immersed in that sheltered life that kept me from thinking of goals that I could actually apply. It wasn't until I shocked myself into the real world that I realized what I could do with a job and graduate school. I began to develop goals for my life.
As we age we amend those goals to ensure that we will meet them. A lawyer that I knew in Florida two years ago said to me, "As I get to the point in my life where my career winds down, I find comfort in the fact that I don't need to change the world in order to make my mark."
That is the realism of it all kicking in. Once you have come to grips with the fact that you will probably not be the one person who leads mankind to world peace, you will live a much happier existence. But that doesn't mean that you should eliminate those thoughts right now: far from it. The world thrives on people with big ideas.
One classmate of mine quit his job as a computer engineer to pursue liberal arts MA and a classicist's life. He likes to quote a leader of the civil rights movement when he says, he wants to do what makes him come alive because "The world needs people who have come alive."
Without some goal, some dream, nothing ever gets done. Sure, those of you who care more about going out to parties and arranging your social calendar will have a good time for the time being in college. But trust me, I was once in that mode, I once didn't care what I was going to do with myself.
It is hard to rebuild your dreams in the real world. Use the time that you have know and find out what makes you come alive. Then, strive to be the best and brightest at whatever it is.
Yes you will fail. No there are not enough hours in the day to do everything that will make you the best. But, if you don't have a goal and don't try, how do you know what you will accomplish. If you want something bad enough, you have to sacrifice for it. That will make the failure at least one that came about despite your entire effort. But it will also make the success that much sweeter.
Matt Loughran is a former Observer News Editor and currentily attends graduate school at Saint John's College in Annapolis, Md.
The views expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.
All Viewpoint Stories for Friday, March 31, 2000
