As the year comes to an end, I have but one goal for when the clock strikes midnight and 2021 becomes 2022: have no goals. That’s right. This new year I will set no goals for myself, and I will have no expectations. All that I plan to do, is just be.
I have realized recently that the goals I’ve been setting for myself throughout this year have been unrealistic and may not have been what I truly wanted. Students face a lot of pressures these days: pressures to graduate, perform well, have a social life, a gym life, a family life, a personal life. How many lives are we supposed to have and when exactly do these all become synchronized?
I believe too many of us are creating goals that appear purposeful — but I worry that we’re trying to achieve a surface level of achievement without developing our inner lives first.
Let’s start with gym goals. Fitness is a huge trend on social media right now, and physical activity is an important aspect of wellness. But when are we taking it too far, and what are our true goals underneath it? It is not a coincidence that the global gym industry carried a worth of $96.7 billion dollars in 2020.
I can personally attest to the unhealthy life of a fitness junkie. At the beginning of the year, I became a gym nut determined to reach the goal of getting ripped. I was hitting personal weight and rep records like you wouldn’t believe. Why was I doing this? The surface me would have told you that it made me feel good, exercise is healthy — that’s what all the doctors are saying, right? The reality? I had failed at accepting my body for what it was and was putting every effort into making it into something I felt would pass as acceptable.
This led to boys. Oh, the boys. The first sign of a girl with abs and a booty and they flock like moths to a dusty old light bulb. They came bearing gifts, dates, coffees, sweet nothings that floated from their false lips right into my weak longing-for-approval ears. Unfortunately, thinking I had finally succeeded at becoming someone lovable eventually left my bed empty the next morning, and my text messages left on read time after time. I know I am not alone on this. Too many people set goals of finding the right relationship, or seeking love as a way to validate personal feelings of emptiness or loneliness.
We need to first develop a relationship with ourselves before we can seek out healthy relationships with others. Learn about your boundaries, your needs, and how to love yourself first. No one wants to be around someone who is obsessively pursuing the betterment of their surface level self, while neglecting important aspects of internal wellness and healthy relationships with others.
Our society puts so much pressure on young people to go to university, graduate, and land a stellar job making lots of money. In my own life, when my goals at love and beauty began to fail, I turned my attention to what I thought was a healthy goal: achieving good grades. Unfortunately, we can’t perform our best when we are feeling depressed or unfulfilled within ourselves. A’s are hard to come by when you’re having a mental breakdown. My midterm paper came back with a B-, and my GPA still isn’t high enough to get me into my dream masters.
The disappointment of repeated failure eventually landed me in a mental health clinic. Which, ironically, required me to make more goals — healing goals, and even these seemed to be too much for me to take on. I just needed to rest. Our society does not adequately teach people how to recognize their emotional issues which can lead to people making unhealthy goals in the first place. There’s too much focus on “fixing” people and problems so they can continue to work – rather than actually solving them.
So, this new year, ask yourself if your goals are what will truly make you happy in life. What is your inner life like? Are these goals your goals? Or are they the goals of a society or economy that is crumbling and sick? Maybe even a family or relationship that is crumbling and sick? A church or health care system that is crumbling and sick? What are the goals of your inner journey?
St. Thomas of Aquinas spent much of his life as a top scholar, and was considered to be a philosophical genius. Shortly before he died he stated: “The end of my labors has come. All that I have written appears to be as so much straw after the things that have been revealed to me.” Aquinas, having discovered some internal, profound realization from God, never picked up his pen again.
Image: Unsplash
Darien Johnsen is a UFV alumni who obtained her Bachelor of Arts degree with double extended minors in Global Development Studies and Sociology in 2020. She started writing for The Cascade in 2018, taking on the role of features editor shortly after.
She’s passionate about justice, sustainable development, and education.
