Rushing to a goal

I grew up-as you did too, possibly with idealistic mentors who wanted me to have a goal.

- IT CAME TO MIND | MANISH NANDY

Without goal, you wander and can go wayward; with a goal, you advance steadily and achieve something. That is what I learned and believed. I must have a goal, to be rich, to be learned, to be successful.

When I finished college and went to work for a large group, I learned about the prevailing doctrine of managing by objectives.

You must have an objective to achieve anything. You must set targets of market share, task completion or goal achievement.

That is the way to succeed.

Then I was astounded to read the British economist Schumacher's remarkable pointer that the entire science of economics is based on an assumption of the Economic Man, a person who makes all his decisions rationally, calculating benefit and loss, price and cost.

The whole structure collapses if you conceive of a human as having unselfish, altruistic, or community-minded other-directed goals. Your idea of a goal shapes the rest of your thinking.

Listless, I was wandering Nepal's dusty roads when I encountered the Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh's staggering idea of goallessness. Living without a goal, a viable target, a noble purpose? Wouldn't it be a disastrously aimless life? I thought it a shocking idea that could only lead to a meaningless existence.

If so, Hanh asks the simple question: what is the goal of a life's journey? We know where it ends: death is our final destination.