The Impossibility of Modest Goals

I can't say I was disappointed at autumn's apparent early arrival. Exhaustion has become the rule for my life, and summer's weight only exacerbated the sensation. Autumn resonates more strongly of history and tradition, and these venerable intonations foster feelings of connection and therefore life and therefore vivacity.

When my goals were fame and fortune — for whatever reason — it was a simple matter to imagine success as imminent. I was able to keep up the work, so all that was wanting was a break, and miraculous things such as breaks, swift and unpredictable, require only wisps of luck to transform from imagination to reality.

Now that my dreams are more mundane — to pay my bills, to keep my family safe and healthy, to write from time to time, to read, to more fully discover the miracle that this world, this life, represents — they seem nigh upon unreachable. Simply to have the liberty, amidst life's constraints, to spend an autumn afternoon swinging on a hammock with a book hovering above my searching eyes seems a blessing to dear to seek.

The incrementalism of achievable goals is the thing. Plot out, with mathematical precision, the rate of improvement against the height of the obstacles, and years of unsustainable effort loom in the wearing of those obstacles down. More likely to wear out myself! More likely to stumble and make no progress at all. Then mounted on the doubt like damnation's last temptation is the insuppressible knowledge that achievable goals would not be enough once reached. But perhaps they oughtn't be.

Perhaps we are made — or I should say, I fervently believe we are made — to be ever-questers, relentless in our drive because that toward which we strive is infinite. Life is not precise, and it is not entirely predictable. Wisps of good fortune are always possible, and gradual improvement so often seems impossible that one can only conclude that it is wisest merely to strive without expectations.

Still, it's easy to regret not having — whatever it is that one doesn't have. They are a contradictory set, lacks. While once we lack time, next we lack resources. While once we lack peace, next we lack drama. It's easy to regret. It's easy to rue the effortless good fortune of others. Difficult not to snarl at the lifelong vacations that others appear to experience. Difficult to remind oneself of the advantage of being humbled in preparation for the equality of Heaven — reached most handily by those, if I may dare to presume, who have achieved an immodest humbleness, an understanding of the achievability of that which is truly impossible.