When I was a child, I used to think that people who travel together were going to the same venue. For instance, if we were going to attend a wedding, I imagined that everyone in the bus or train were going to the same venue. Whereas, the fact is that even people going to the same venue have different purposes for being there.
Life is also metaphorically compared to a journey. People have different destinations when they undertake the journey. Some people have no specific goal and travel just for the fun of it. Though Lord Buddha said that happiness is in the journey, and not in the destination, he clearly did not mean a journey without a destination. It is generally agreed that it is important to have a goal in life. We may have many minor goals, but to have an overarching goal lends life a larger purpose.
In a place of worship, people go for different reasons. Some people go for personal gratification of their desires, some go to consume the sweets and savories served there, some to enjoy the peaceful ambience and some even to steal. People also go there to make others think that they are devout believers. However, rare are those people who go because of real devotion to God.
In an educational institution, the goal of the students is to learn and earn a diploma or a degree. However, they do it in different ways and for different purposes. The goal does not stop there. The qualification they gained has the purpose of getting a job for some, or for others to get the label of being educated. Rarely, someone learns for their own edification. As Aristotle, the famous Greek philosopher said, "Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all." Our father of the nation, Mahatma Gandhi, also said, "Education which does not mould character is absolutely worthless."
Thus, it can be seen that it is not enough to have goals in life, but it is even more important to have ideals to guide those goals. Pursuit of Goals are spurred by the urge to grab the opportunities for personal success while ideals always put oneself in the context of the community to which one belongs. Such a community could be a family, a society or even the whole world. As the circle of community one encompasses in one's ideal widens, the stature of the person also increases. Therefore, by pursuing great ideals we do not lose anything, but stand to gain more and contribute more to the society in which we live.
It is enormously disturbing to see that there is too much emphasis on goal setting, which actually is limited to personal success. Then the individual loses sight of the needs of the beings around them and becomes more selfish. That is why we have incidents like the one where a tribal youth was beaten to death for allegedly stealing food to appease his hunger. That this happened in a so-called progressive community like that of Kerala might come to many as a surprise. However, it only points to the misnomers that terms like 'progress' and 'development' have become.
It was not for nothing that Jesus Christ said that "Man does not live by bread alone."
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