Tie your Life to a Goal and Transcend

The sense of Value of Life and the possibility of transcending it beyond the narrow limits that physical existence poses depends on the ability to tie life to an Objective.

Albert Einstein said:

“If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things.”

There are very few people who transcend beyond their natural framework of space and time, very few those to whom history and the collective interest owe something. This is because most human beings develop their lives based on people and things.

Unfortunately, things and people are transitory and therefore achieve meaning and support for life as long as they exist, then produce a painful void. It is difficult for people to understand that, in essence, they can only consider themselves the masters of their destiny, of their ability to be and to do; the rest of the things and the people that accompany the trip are a product of this, not a cause or reason. For the ability to be and to do, life rewards the human being with things that he comes to possess and people who share them with him. The relationship is not inverse.

There are natural laws in life that cannot be ignored, and two of them explain Einstein’s statement:

The first is associated with “things” since they are subject to the basic rule of “winning and losing”. In life you win and lose proportionally; no one is predestined to always win or to lose in all cases. Victory is explained in the ability to overcome defeat. Those who have not lost do not win and those who have not won at some time do not lose. The wonderful thing is to face and sustain the dynamic naturally and with good spirits, the stimulating thing is to face the game with the specific intention of winning or accepting defeat as a benefit for the immediate future. What has value is the process and not the end.

The second natural law that life presents is linked to people and their essential freedom. No person belongs to another by right, all are barely empowered to win, with a lot of effort, the affection, love, friendship, identification, or loyalty of others. Each person is a miraculous individual and is essentially due to it. Basing the meaning of one’s existence in terms of the lives of others is a vain act. “Living for others” can be understood as a life objective (and one’s transcendence can also be justified in this), but this is different from “living in the function of others”. This includes especially the closest loved ones: family and friends, who are also masters of their destiny and have an essential duty to adhere to their objectives.

The need to transcend is explained in the possibility of living life beyond the things or people with which it rewards. Transcendence is a function of the objectives that the human being considers for his life. The process of achieving the objectives conditions the final relationship with things and people.

To be successful in meeting objectives, a balanced and productive relationship with people must be maintained; without this condition, the task becomes a difficult and painful process. The journey through life is not a journey devoid of difficulties and obstacles and the task of permanently overcoming them is not within the reach of the man alone, but of those who have achieved a minimum balance in their interpersonal relationships. No virtue or ability is enough to achieve victory if it is not accompanied by stability and basic harmony in family and social relationships.

The influence of relationships on life goals is also explained from the “inside out”, the conditioning comes from the stability that is achieved in the closest relationships: marriage, children, parents, siblings, friends, and the immediate social group. Order is vital for balance since little progress is made concerning it if, for example, appropriate personal relationships are maintained with the immediate community and not with the immediate family; if the relationship with friends is balanced and not with the children or if the latter is fine and the marriage relationship is not. The basic harmony in interpersonal relationships is like a spiral that starts from the core and extends from there.

Among all relationships, probably the most delicate is the one found in the very center of this spiral: marriage. The couple’s relationship is decisive to achieve the objectives set, even the closest ones and those of a family nature. A marriage that lacks a basic balance, prevents reaching the objectives promptly. This relationship is even more sensitive than the one with children, since with them the responsibility is temporary and is intimately conditioned by it. While no one can “choose the family bosom into which they are born, the couple’s relationship is subject to a specific choice. The person who has a clear vision of life based on objectives and not on things or people, “chooses” the couple with certain criteria and builds a relationship with them that is also subordinated to common objectives, achieving greater stability and richness throughout. of time.

Of course, the odds exist here as in all things, but in general, the exceptions only prove the rule: success comes more to those who have a balanced marriage and family relationship. Only from this point can one aspire to transcendence.

These statements make it necessary to contextualize the very meaning of Love, because they place it, by force, in a higher dimension: where it is not only explained as an emotional commitment to another person, but as a link to the integral concept of life. Love, in its higher dimension, starts specifically from self-love, love for what one is, for what one does, and for what one wants. From there it is projected towards others and culminates perfecting itself in a natural love towards life. Misunderstood Love is the cause of the greatest frustrations. Whoever does not have first Love for himself is a lacking person, essentially incapable of “giving”, and nothing else is who does not have objectives and goals with which he can justify his value of him. Well said Oscar Wilde that:

“Loving yourself is the beginning of an adventure that lasts a lifetime.”

The meaning of life associated with “things” is much sadder, because they should always be considered a means and not an end. Success is not measured in terms of the accumulation of “things”, success is a function of the “production capacity” that the human being has. The accumulation of things that is not supported by a solid and qualified capacity to produce them is fragile and ephemeral. Value is found in who produces, not in the product; the merit and satisfaction for the fact of “having” are achieved thanks to the process, the effort, the capacity, and the ability to generate “things”.

Now, it is not bad to “have things” or aspire to have them as long as they constitute a measure of the productivity that is achieved and contribute to the quality of life, but when this becomes the central objective it loses its essential value because it submits the “production capacity” to indolent quantitative criteria and from here it is not strange to observe lives willing to do “whatever it takes” to acquire and accumulate things. Invariably this ends up establishing an irresponsible and corrupt circuit of life, one that upsets the basic balance of productivity and relationships with others.

Transcendence is an imperative that is raised to the human being as a factor of distinction from the other species; without it, the same state in which he lives today would not have been possible: progress and development are the product of the desire to transcend beyond the limits that define a basic animal condition. The value of ONE life, the miracle of existing, cannot demand smaller payments.

Some people have transcended generations and established historical milestones, but there are also those who in their transcendence have marked ONE life or ONE moment; both have complied with themselves and with humanity. The antithesis of Transcendence is Mediocrity and it is widespread among those who do not tie their lives to an objective, because probably the best definition of mediocrity is not related to what one IS, but to what one does not want to BE. The immense universe of mediocrity is composed, like a body of molecules, of an endless number of small “conformist” individuals who begin and end each miraculous day of life always the same, without sorrows and joys, without victories and defeats, always in the opprobrious comfort of grey.

Whoever transcends goes beyond himself, the people that surround him, and the things he has or can accumulate, who transcends fulfills objectives solidly anchored in the depth of time, in this way he manifests his faith for the future, what fact constitutes an ode to life.

Curiously, it is these same people who give the most joy to those close to them and end up accumulating more things.