Project Vision 21

Let's be honest: at the beginning of each year, we all set goals or make “resolutions” for the new year, but just a few weeks later, we no longer meet those goals. Worse still, we believe that we will have to wait another year to set new goals that we obviously will not achieve either. 

But there is something worse than not meeting objectives and that is worse than dedicating yourself to achieving the wrong objectives.

Many people set goals for getting “more of the same” and then, at the end of the year, they have achieved it and have a new car that already has all the technology incorporated. Or they have bought the house of their dreams. Or they have gone on vacation to that place they wanted so much. Or they have finally managed to modify their physical appearance.

Obviously, there's nothing wrong with buying a new car or a new house, taking a nice vacation, or improving your physical health. That's not the problem. The problem arises when these objectives are pursued within the framework of constant social pressure to show ourselves as “successful” or “achievers.”

That is, we aim to achieve goals imposed by others (society, media, social networks), but not our own goals. Then, the car, the house, the vacations, the new physical appearance, far from being transformative elements, become traps because the following year we already want another new car and another house, without ever settling.

Therefore, achieving goals that others pressure us and even force us to achieve is worse, so to speak, than achieving no goals at all, because “fake goals” are just an illusion, a tragic self-deception based on believing that “having” is equivalent to “being.” 

As Erich Fromm no longer said in the last century (in his 1976 book), we live in a society in which “having” is preferred to “being”, because “having” (car, house, large bank account, or whatever) ) is associated with “unlimited happiness and freedom.” As a result, people “believe” themselves to be somebody just because they have something, specially if they have something that others do not have.

But, as Fromm wisely warns, the existential mode of “having” focuses all its energy on controlling and acquiring “things,” and not just material things, since “having” includes people (that is, “human resources”). and to knowledge. In this way, the existential mode of having leaves no room for “being” nor, much less, for being ourselves.

On the contrary, the increasingly rare existential way of being directs all its energy to “cultivation and development” both personal and social and even global. Therefore, the existential way of being activates another existential way, that of doing or acting, whose main purpose is to act for the good of the individual and society.

In conclusion, when one sets one's own goals and does not achieve them, at least with a little reflection, one discovers one's own limits. But the externally imposed goals trick us into believing that “having” has no limits.