to my children’s children

Well. Tonight I actually wrote out a framework of goals. Yesterday I felt small and self-absorbed; tonight I remembered that my highest values are to bring as much generosity, compassion and wisdom into the world as I can, minimizing the greed, anger and ignorance that I generate. And I generate plenty; because I am a human being, and it is the nature of human beings to be greedy, angry and ignorant all too often. The framework for the rest falls into place as a support for those highest values – more about that later. For tonight, I’ll just note that it’s brought me back in a little better alignment with my ‘higher self’ – and, no surprise, has left me feeling better.

So the plan for today was to do the Big Plan: life-goals, decade-goals, 5-year goals, 1-year goals, etc…down to goals for the week. I went down a zillion diffuse tangents – at what level(s) should I be articulating goals? At what level(s) should I be articulating vision? And there was that familiar urge…to give up: ‘wow, this is harder than I thought,’ ‘I thought I was clear on my goals, but obviously I’m not, how depressing,’ etc – but I refuse to have that be the end of what I have to say for myself for today. Finally I decided that setting goals for actually doing 4 things this week – meditation, exercise, de-cluttering and making several phone calls I’ve been avoiding – is a great place to start. I already know that all of those things fit with my longer-term goals. So that will be goal #5 for this week – continue to craft a statement of vision and goals.

So that’s a discerning question that has become clear to me as I write this: whatever I’m pondering/planning, I can always ask myself: what do I already know?