Objectives are commonplace ideas we wish to direct our lives towards and which we should keep in mind in order to avoid both the dangerous daily inertia (standstill) and the equally dangerous improvisation due to small continuous deviations (gliding along with the waves). One must be careful to maintain the balance on the very narrow path that runs along the cliff, one false step into one direction and you will slip on the ink of approximation, one false step into the other direction and you will fall into perfectionism for its own sake. Our objectives should be able of illuminating us in dark times and be headlights to open a spiral of light in the mist that surrounds us, instead of being hinders to our freedom of movement which they often are.
Maybe we have too many objectives, too many headlights which end up blinding us in order to disorient us and at the end we think we are on the wrong way, having entered a dead end or having lost the direction towards our destination. It is also true that there are many objectives in our life that we do not succeed in realizing, though we desire them intensely and invest supernatural forces on them. As if there were a mocking devil to make fun of us continuously. A mocking devil capable of transforming an impossible impediment due to tenacity and that supernatural force we use to realize our objectives. An impossible impediment which remains between ourselves and that which we desire with ardour. Often we try to reach those objectives that we cannot have and it almost seems that, only in the moment in which we give up, we are able of capturing the importance of having and pursue those objectives. We often are faced with objectives that definitely collide with decisions at crossroads and alternative ways.
In the film “Sliding Doors”, young Helen finds herself before the doors of the underground carriage: if she succeeds in taking the underground, her life will take one direction; but if the doors close without her onboard, her life will take a completely different turn.
And this is one of the numerous films that is about occasions that are due to the unpredictable, to fate and coincidence, to the fortuity of events. “What would have happened to me if I had taken that train?” Hence all claims and recriminations of “self”. “If I had done that, if the other thing happened to me, if I had accepted that proposal, if I had talked less (or more)", etc, etc. This film helps us understand that each claim regarding a better direction, in which our destiny could have turned, is fruitless. “Better” as compared to what objective? In virtue of what expectations?
What if we are dealing with reasoning due to the fact that our objectives are fading away and if they are considered to be born on the verge of failure? Is a vain attempt to change the rules, to adapt them in an “unconventional” way to our rules to be desired? If yes, then our task as actors would be to represent the best interpretation of “if I had taken the other way” or rather “if I had not taken that way”. Or even better “ Why me?” (generally speaking it becomes an interpretation worthy of an Oscar. No rivals, since the Jury would vote our interpretation unanimously).
Who knows why this question has never been made to a person who has won the lottery. If our children are on the right way, we congratulate ourselves since we are good parents. If they are on the wrong way, if they slip or act as rebels, we blame them and the way they have chosen. That is, we take responsibility for good things, but we are ready to dissociate if the wrong way is chosen at the crossroads.
“Objectives are not fate; they are direction. They are not commands; they are commitments. They do not determine the future; they are means to mobilize the resources and energies of the business for the making of the future”.
(Peter Drucker)It is difficult for us to understand and rationalize that every road may represent positivity and negativity: life is worth to be lived just like it is, as a part of the Great Game, fully accepting its rules, without trying to live its course in a proactive way.
We can choose any road. The important thing is not to behave as an eternal student. Because if you consider yourself to be a student, you will always have time to make errors: "I am nor ready, next time I shall do better”, “I shall try another course”, “I need a different method”. To recite the mantra of “I must do, I must do” with the sole objective of showing one´s own predisposition of doing, one´s good will is a terrible thing in these cases. It is deleterious since it puts you in the conditions to evaluate the efforts and not the result after the exaggerated delay. You take even more time and end up not being completely responsible for your own work.
Often the goals we cannot achieve are the things that we pursue with anxiety, being more important than many other things in our lives; or rather, the more rational and deliberate the quest is, the more itself becomes an active obstacle to its realization. Being too occupied with the concept, we cannot see the plot, the development which is starting to spread. We do not see the series of secondary products that form and themselves constitute an integral part of it all. The secondary product is the hidden part of the profession. It indicates the way and gives essence to the qualities of the profession. That path allows us not to behave like eternal students.
To face the chosen way with the continuous ability of betting on oneself, on one´s own capacities and wishes to modify status quo in order to make every way become “the way” to follow: it is make up by our style, the challenge to mortgage a piece of the future, of our capacity of innovating daily life. It is made up by our wish to draw and be drawn, of our awareness that life is not a film, or that it is much better than one. In a film, it is the final that creates the story and afterwards colours the contents and the contours; in our lives there are continuous comparisons with the course that characterizes its development.
No way is better than another, there is only a capacity of continuously inventing a life path characterized by a wish of continuously changing the way in which you consider the way and try to look upon it with a different gaze rather than trying to feel remorse for the roads that we have not trodden on.
Maybe during the
construction of a piece
of furniture, we discover
that “sawdust” and not
the construction of the
piece of furniture is the
most important thing.
The secondary product
sawdust would then be
the important part.
Maybe the most
important secondary
products are the errors
we commit. Errors that,
when analysed, allow us to take into account small resources that otherwise would be ignored.
Without any risks in his life Michelangelo would have painted the floor of the Sixtine Chapel.
(Neil Simon)