What am I willing to give up?
How it started?
I have always been the kind of guy to dream big. The dreams of a perfect job, perfect relationship, perfect life have always been with me. Now, normally I would say this is a good thing, and indeed in some way it is. I have always believed that greed, in its purest form, brings nothing but the desire to strive, to better ourselves, to get what we truly want without compromising on anything. The question of how greed affects our moral compasses have been long been discussed by prominent philosophers for over a millennia, so I will not delve into that.
However, not all dreams, goals or aspirations are created equal. Even though I believe that people should always try to achieve all that their hearts desire, it is still important to understand exactly what dreams to prioritize. For some it might act as a safety net, allowing themselves to justify their failings and giving them a convenient excuse that because they couldn't achieve what they wanted, they must have not desired it hard enough, hence it wasn't that important to them. For me, however, knowing exactly what dreams I can or cannot give up on will help me clear my mind from potential distractions, allowing me to concentrate on a dream that I believe will help to fulfill all the rest of my desires.
Let's stop speaking abstractions
Above, I've talked a lot about some really vague ideas, so to clarify on some of them I will now give some examples from my life and explain what has sparkled this discussion for me.
The list of some my desires goes as follows:
- *Owning my own garden
- ***Becoming a really experienced software engineer, the one that other people will ask advice from
- **Practicing stage hypnosis and hypnotherapy
- *Becoming a polyglot
- **Buying my parents a new house to live in
- ***Living in a Vienna-style social house
- **Owning a cafe that I will be managing with my friends (sorta like a bar in IASIP)
- *Becoming someone's mentor and close friend
- **Engaging in political activism and promoting trade unions, car-free infrastructure
- *Writing a really helpful book/blog/manual
After thinking for a while, I decided to label the all the really important goals with ***, the less important ones **, and not at all important as *
It is important to understand that all goals mentioned here are something that I would really love to engage in and they are the ones that I feel I would have a lot of fun doing. I sincerely believe that all of them will bring happiness to my life, in some way or another.
***
These are the goals that I cannot absolutely give up on as long as I like the though of engaging with them. These are the goals that are going to be my core values going on in the future. If, in the future, the coding will become dull and boring for me, then I will consider removing it from the list of my goals altogether, because this is not the list of things that are important. This is the list of dreams I have for my future. In no way do I want my future to look boring.
**
These are the goals that I feel are important to me, and I would really like achieve in the future. However, I might want to reconsider or delay them if they will obstruct or interfere the *** goals.
*
These are the goals that I think would be cool to achieve. They will spice up my live, provide me with many new experiences. No doubt, those are something, that I would be able to talk about over a cup of coffee. However, they are not that important for structuring my character.