Screeds
Thursday, September 02, 2004
Change Of Objective
November 2, 2003
I'm a bit tired of the Curmudgeon, so I've sent him out to clean the garage while I compose this coda to my earlier essay on the perception of time as a function of one's life integration. Recent developments in my own life have shed additional light on the motivating inquiry behind that piece, posed by Kevin White at Nepenthe Island in his plaint Aging And The Hour.
Those of you who've been reading the Palace for a while are already aware that I dislike to talk about my personal life. Everyone has one, and in my opinion it should, by and large, remain personal: that is, kept to oneself. To drone on about one's individual triumphs and troubles is inherently self-centered. Appropriate modesty directs us away from such self-indulgences. Anyway, we have neighborhood bars for that; the World Wide Web deserves to be used in a more constructive fashion.
That sense of modesty / privacy / what-have-you was a large part of what moved me to invent my stage persona, the Curmudgeon Emeritus. When I'm fixin' to rant about some topic of general interest, I put him on like a sweater, then let him put you on for a thousand words or so. To keep the facade in place, I forbid the Curmudgeon to write in the first person, which occasionally makes for adventures in syntax, but serves its purpose of depersonalizing the results fairly well.
Nevertheless, there is a real person behind the mask, and he faces the same sorts of challenges and obstacles any other American must face. The extended project of self-construction that constitutes a man's life doesn't vary much with geographical placement, financial status, occupational category, or preference in television fare.
Not long ago, I realized that I was getting old.
That's a perception that radiates implications in many directions. Among the most salient is that your time to achieve your goals is running out. If you've been pursuing a major goal, one that requires decades of sustained dedication, and you enter your fifties no closer to its achievement than you were in your twenties or thirties, it can "do bad things to your head."
This is not a tragedy of major dimensions. Every man should have at least one goal that requires dedicated pursuit over an entire lifetime, though he won't necessarily get what he seeks. But learning to accept a probability of success that diminishes steadily toward zero is among the hardest tasks a man can face. It requires that we defeat our greatest enemy, our tendency to think with our wishes instead of our heads.
It also requires that we answer a difficult question: If we don't get the prize, were our efforts nonetheless worthwhile?
This is a question of overwhelming metaphysical import: the question of whether we should view our plans and actions as means to an end, or as things that must stand on their own merits.
In a recent novel, my protagonist, a grandmaster of all things martial, posed the following query to his apprentice and successor-to-be:
Loughlin sat back. "We've talked about objectives already. How does an objective differ from a motive?""What?"
"Think, Christine. Did Louis ever give you any crime fiction to read? Detective stories? Murder mysteries?"
"Well, yes. He wasn't too big on it, but there was some."
"And what was the mantra the detectives were always chanting? What was their investigation intended to discover?"
She thought a moment. "Motive, means, and opportunity."
He nodded. "We can pass on means and opportunity for now. That's tactics. Motive is the 'why' of a criminal act. Where does it reside? Inside the criminal, among his desires, fears and emotions, or outside, in the objective world that he shares with the rest of us?"
The space between one's objective and one's motive is an important and inadequately explored realm. Just about the only people who concern themselves with it occupationally are military planners. This is most unfortunate.
Objectives are real and demonstrable things, accessible through the senses and invariant among observers. Motives are private and personal, part of our internal space, and as such can only be uncertainly inferred by others. In point of fact, we don't always know them ourselves.
Normally, a motive is tied to an objective. Smith conceives of an objective and resolves to achieve it. Therefore, he implements a plan of action that, he hopes, will bring him ever nearer to the objective, until finally it's in his grasp. What moves Smith to undertake the action plan is his motive.
This is not mere word-chopping. Should Smith eventually decide no longer to pursue the objective, the change will not be in the objective itself but in his evaluation of its desirability or his willingness to do what it takes to get it: his motive. A motive is a desire that seeks expression in action.
We are goal-seeking creatures. Our desires propel us through our lives. Our motives are the engines of that propulsion.
The degree to which we control our objectives and motives is modest at best. Certainly we choose our objectives, but that's a dubious substitute for control. Our motives arise from our desires, over which we have somewhat more control -- we do speak of "acquiring the taste" for certain things, after all -- but not an absolute degree. Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of human needs appears to be firmly set in almost every man's psyche. We consider those who diverge from this structure at the lower levels dysfunctional, "sick."
Part of a man's drive for self-actualization must necessarily be his acceptance of the limits to his control. He may choose to pursue any objective in the world. He cannot guarantee its achievement.
Once, in a fey mood, I composed the following algorithm:
- Select a technique that you think will get you what you think you want.
- Will this technique require you to lose body parts, go to jail, or burn in Hell?
- If so, return to step 1.
- If not, proceed to step 3.
- Do a little of it.
- Are you at your goal, approaching it, or receding from it?
- If at your goal, stop.
- If approaching, return to step 3.
- If receding, return to step 1.
This algorithm has much to commend it, but it doesn't deal with the possibility of a goal that continues to recede no matter what you do. The more ambitious your objective is, the greater the chance that it is unachievable by any means within your powers.
Prolonged frustration can cause the abandonment of an objective not achieved. Many would say this is ordinarily healthful; why wear yourself out chasing a dream forever out of reach? And indeed, some dreams must be abandoned. When the head cheerleader marries the quarterback of the football team, we who play in the offensive line or carry the water buckets must set our caps at other targets.
But some other goals, though they seem unachievable, may be retained in altered form to good effect. Indeed, they might well be vital to one's mental health. For no motive can be sustained without an associated objective, and without motives, we stop, wither, and die.
How do you discriminate between the two cases? That most awful of words, anathematized by all persons everywhere, whatever their stations in life: experience.
In "Squeeze Play," I wrote that a satisfying life, which feels full but not with "filler," must be integrated around a theme. Themes are tied up with objectives, although sometimes indirectly and in obscure ways. But the achievability of an objective is less critical to the maintenance of your chosen theme than your degree of dedication to it: the strength and fidelity of your motive, as expressed through the means you've adopted for its pursuit.
The great challenge, once you've become convinced that your objective is out of reach, is transforming your chosen means into an end in itself.
I know a woman who paints. She's not bad, but "not bad" is about all anyone can say for her. She didn't set out to be "not bad"; she set out to be a successor to Goya. Having realized that that level of achievement is beyond her, she's learned to take pleasure in the act of painting, and satisfaction from showing her work to friends and intimates, without pretense or a demand for fulsome praise.
I know a man who plays the guitar. He's okay; at any rate, it provides accompaniment for his singing, which is also okay and no more. But he didn't shoot for "okay"; he wanted to be the next Leo Kottke. He'll never get there and he knows it, but he takes immense pleasure in what he can do, and in providing some entertainment to friends at parties and other odd intervals.
I know a man who writes fiction. He's moderately capable, but the heights of fictional achievement seem barred to him. Sadly, and unlike the previous two, he's retreated from his gift, resolved to write no more, because he can't win through to the acceptance and mass audience he seeks. It's a pity, for he really does have talent, if not world-shaking talent, and he's foreclosed the possibility of learning to enjoy it for its own sake. But perhaps he'll find something else.
I know a man who set out to be a great martial artist. He got to be pretty good, too: first-degree black belt in Aikido, which is a very demanding form. But he'll never get past that level. Infirmity has overtaken him in a big way; arthritis and other diseases of the joints have made further progress impossible for him. These things don't respect one's ambitions. Under their smothering weight, he has decided, for the sake of his life and health, to venture onto the mats no more. But they can't quench the fire in his soul: the determination to be as much as he can, to give as much to his sport as he can, under whatever limitations he must endure. So today he teaches and writes. He consults to senseis all over America, holding seminars on the philosophical and psychological requirements for high prowess in the martial arts. He's become one of the most admired men in his field, whose contributions of the mind far outweigh what he might have brought to his sport through any exertion of his body.
The moral isn't "never give up." It's more like, "if you must give up, don't give in." Allow your motives and their manifestations to be worthy in and of themselves, so that reaching the objective they nominally target becomes a secondary consideration.
Our motives can build things in us that we fail to appreciate until our original objectives fade from sight. Once your eyes come loose from the unattainable Grail sliding beyond the horizon, you're freed to savor other things, things closer to home. There are the things you've made, and can still make, and the dedication that brought you to that level of skill. There is the sense of substance from having trodden a demanding road, willingly and without stint. There are the appreciation and admiration of those who know of your efforts.
And, as with my friend the martial artist, there is sometimes another road, a byway from the path originally chosen, that can complete your journey even though it ends in a place you never sought to reach.
It is good to have a destination to journey toward, but it is the journey that matters, in the end. [Ursula LeGuin, The Left Hand Of Darkness]
Excuse me? What were the particulars about the personal development I alluded to at the start, that gave rise to this disquisition on gracefully surrendering one's unattainable objectives? That's a rather probing question, wouldn't you say? But, as it happens, I was about to...but I see the Curmudgeon has finished with the garage and wants his word processor back. Over to you, Mr. C.
| <<- Cause People | Chiseling ->> |
