March 27, 2008

• Responsibility

  Are you a goal-driven person?

  Have you ever played Simmbook?  This is a game on facebook where you
  simulate real life, sort of like “the sims” only different.
  
  
  
  I don’t get this game at all. I play it. I play it pretty regularly but
  I don’t get it. There’s this checklist of things you are supposed to
  accomplish with your simm based on your lifestyle choice. So it’ll have
  things like “be in love” or “have 5 friends” or “get promoted” or “max
  out your skills” or “receive a box of chocolate”.  And you know what? I
  feel no inclination or desire to achieve any of those things? I just
  don’t see much point in it. I just don’t get it.
  
  
  
  And yet that doesn’t mean the game doesn’t amuse me. I still play. I
  made my simm a cashier and I randomly interact with the game with no
  real focus or goal in mind whatsoever. I’m not going to achieve all of
  the checkboxes. I probably won’t even get half of them done. I’ll be
  lucky if I don’t get sick and die. And so what? I sort of like the
  random amusing things I encounter through the game.
  
  
  
  Some people are different. A lot different. They play the game
  seriously. That doesn’t mean they don’t have as much fun randomly
  interacting and exploring as I do. Maybe they have more. But obtaining
  the check points are important to them. Getting those things out for
  their simm matters a lot to them. In fact from what I’ve observed,
  *most* people who play simmbook are like that. They play for points or
  they play to win and achieve all the things they can achieve in that
  game. They are “goal-driven”.
  
  
  
  Simmbook is exactly like real life.
  
  
  
  I’ve met people, and interacted with people for whom obtaining their
  goals, much like the simmbook goals list, is very very important to
  them.  One person I even heard talking about it once described their
  life as a sort of a time line. Married by age X, children by age Y,
  good job by age Z, promoted to high power position in said job by age
  Q, own their own business by age R, retire by age S,  etc. etc. Not everyone is that specific, but lots of people have
  very substantive goals for themselves that they want to accomplish, and
  they won’t let anything get in their way of accomplishing those goals.
  
  
  
  And for those people, making a decision that leads to a short term
  happiness but detracts from the probability of reaching their long term
  aims is taboo. It’s frivolous. It’s impulsive. It’s irresponsible.
  
  
  
  These people aren’t some minority. In my experience most
  people are like this to some extent or another. Even people I’ve met
  who weren’t like this, tended to become more like this as time went on.
  Goals and ends became more important to them. They set goals for
  themselves and set out to obtain those goals. They came to think that
  that was really important. That it mattered.
  
  
  
  Everybody does this.
  
  
  
  Except me.
  
  
  
  I have no goals whatsoever.
  
  
  
  Really I don’t. I remember in grade school and high school we’d get all
  these lectures from various people telling us how important it was for
  us to learn to set goals for ourselves and then reach and strive to
  obtain them.  I think back then I did set goals for myself. I did fight
  to reach them. Finish at the top of my class. Get into prestigious
  college. Stuff like that.  But I was never all that enthusiastic about
  them. I always used to think when the teacher or whoever said that
  something along the lines of “through what criteria should you choose a
  goal?” and “what makes one goal choose-worthy as opposed to another?”
  Basically I didn’t get this arbitrary idea of a “goal”. What were they?
  Where did they come from? Why should I have them? Why should I pursue
  them? 
  
  
  
  But these were sort of the underlying principles that they thought
  everyone already knew the answers to. It was just so obvious to
  everyone that goals were good and everyone should have them. So go get
  yourself some goals you idiot Nephyo!  So I did. But obtaining them
  didn’t make me happy at all.
  
  
  
  And it’s like that now too. I have *wants*. Like I want to be happy. I
  want to have friends and family who care about me and rely upon me and
  on whom I can rely upon. I want real connections with people that mean
  something, not just random acquaintances.  And I want to write. All the time and always. And that’s for no
  other reason than the shear joy I get out of the experience of writing.
  Those are the things I want. Nothing more. I have no other goals. Long
  term or short term. Everything else I do, everything, is either on whim
  or because I am pushed into it by circumstances beyond my control or to
  ensure that I can stay happy.  This is how I am.

  I have fears too. I *don’t* particularly want to die for example. Especially if that means I cease to exist. And I sort of fear screwing up and looking bad in front of people. I don’t want to do that. But those aren’t exactly goals.
  
  
  
  I do have wild fantasies sometimes. Random dreams of achieving near
  impossible things. But these aren’t goals because I know they are far
  outside the realms of possibilities. I don’t even really take them
  seriously enough to think about them long enough to decide whether or
  not I would really want them. Their just the crazy dreams. They don’t
  matter at all.
  
  
  
  You see? I don’t have any sort of concrete goals whatsoever.  Sometimes I try
  to pretend like I do. I try to act like I have ambitions or want to
  achieve some level of success in something or somewhat. But every time
  I do this, I feel like I am putting on an act. I feel like I’m giving a
  show. This isn’t me. I’m dong it because everybody else does, but
  really I don’t care.
  
  
  
  Sometimes, I even ask the advice on occasion of those who I know are
  more ambitious than I to see what they would do. I do this because even
  to pretend to have goals for myself, I need help. Because I just don’t
  think like that at all, I often make decisions that are not optimal. I
  am more willing to take on risk, because I have no long term ends that
  I am trying to defend or protect my ability to achieve. And I usually
  don’t like their advice very much. I don’t even comprehend it. I
  respect them and their opinion, but it’s almost like they are an alien
  species to me.

  I sometimes ask these aliens (which is you recall virtually everyone other than me) questions as I try to understand where they are coming from.  I ask them things like this:

  Where does your motivation come from?
  
  
  And I really want to know. Maybe if I understand what motivates others, I can motivate myself too? But they never have answers to those questions that really make sense to me either. Usuually they don’t really answer it at all. And I’m left still completely devoid of any sense of self-motivation and incapable of building up the drive for it no matter how hard I try. I’m just not at all goal-driven.
  
  
  And I wonder why that is?  What is it about me that makes me so
  untethered? Where did I miss out on the stage when you’re supposed to
  develop these oh so important goals? Was I asleep that day?  Was I
  always like this? Or maybe it’s just because I’ve messed up so often
  that all the normal things people declare as their “goals” seem so
  impossibly far out of reach for me that I never got a good look at them
  so they could never capture my imagination. Maybe I never wanted them,
  because I don’t know what they really are?
  
  
  
  But I don’t know if any of those things are the reason. My mind tells
  me that there is no rational reason to preference one of these
  lifestyles over another. None whatsoever that I can see. But maybe I
  only think that as a means of self justification? Others say things
  like “you have a responsibility to yourself to set goals for yourself
  and achieve them”? Do you? I don’t get that at all. Surely your
  responsibility to yourself is to do the things you want to do and if
  you don’t want to have goals, why should you?
  
  
  
  So I act on whim sometimes. I am impulsive sometimes. Sometimes to a
  fault.  I still feel responsibility is important. I feel my debts to
  others have to be repaid. And I feel it is really important to help the
  people you care about in any way you can. I would glady do anything for
  the people I care about.
  
  
  
  But I don’t act responsibly very often at all in terms of trying to
  achieve ends for myself. I won’t make a decision, knowingly, that leads
  to my unhappiness or that of others even if I felt that was necessary
  to obtain some long term goal. Well how could I ever make such a
  decision since I don’t have any of those long term goals I am seeking
  to obtain?
  
  
  
  So…
  
  
  
  Does this make me just deep down just a horribly irresponsible person?
  
  
  
  Maybe it does.

  • 1:27 am
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