Circle vs Arrow

One of the principles I have realized is ‘long term Goal is Bullshit’. Goal is something which drives a person to do something, for most of the people long term goals are like oxygen for life. People say if you do not have long term goals you will end up nowhere, I say people who do not have long term goals would have enjoyed life far better than people with long term goals. Savoring life is important than achieving in life. We cannot savor coffee if we want to be the fastest drinker of coffee. Meaning if we want to achieve something then the focus should be on one thing all the time, we might not enjoy the path and we might not deviate from our target. If we keep eating apples all the time, we never get a chance to taste orange and life is not just about apples.

The only principle is we should do what we want to do (of course after taking care of our bread and butter), and never think about tomorrow.  We are not sure whether we see next sun rise or not but if we sleep tonight we should be complete and there should not be anything left out for tomorrow. Basically we should be like circle and keep increasing the circumference; we should not be like an arrow pointing at destination. If we are like circle we are full everyday every moment but if we are like an arrow we are never full. Having long term goal is like leading life of an arrow and is like losing the opportunity of exploring life. 

Sachin Tendulkar could not have achieved his records if he had not dedicated his entire life on cricket. After his retirement his wife made a statement “I can imagine cricket without Sachin, but I can't imagine Sachin without cricket”. This is the most damaging statement given to any person’s life by their better half. I would say Sachin has achieved a lot but at the same time he has lost so many things in life, be it simple coffee time with family, reading an article on some nonsense, watching bullshit regional serials, dropping kids to school etc. 

I would prefer savoring life and not achieving something, I want to explore all edges of life; I want to know about politics, stocks, sports, electronic gadgets etc. I do not want to limit myself to a single subject and lose out all other wonderful things. If I want to become master in something I would have to dedicate all my life in that and if I dedicate all my life I will not have enough bandwidth to know about other things.

I remember reading one of the famous swimmer’s (I have forgotten the name) interview, where he says given a chance he would sleep till 7 or 8 in the morning. I could not stop laughing at him in spite of his achievement. After so much of dedication, hard work and sacrifice he still has regrets that he could not sleep till 8 in the morning. He has been continuously waking up at 4 in the morning for his regular practice. If he is in his death bed and if he recalls his life he would probably think he has lost an opportunity to live the life. This person was never a circle and was always an arrow strengthening his skills.

In one of the discourses Bannanje Govindacharya says, we should explore, savor the taste and then renounce the thing. I totally agree with this statement, we should explore life, instead of conquering one thing we should see as many colors of life as possible. Life is meant to be lived not meant to be sacrificed. So should we choose to become an arrow or a circle, I would definitely go for a circle.