Crossing the Nonsense Divide

So I've been pondering on how I can either choose or frame my "Target Goals" for my Life List or Bucket List. It is a tricky thing though, to craft just exactly WHAT REALLY MATTERS to you in life.

What does Success mean for YOU? or ME?

When I was younger, it was all about *Accomplishment* -- getting good grades, winning the approval of teachers, parents, you-name-it-authority-figures. And I had good reason too, for living that way. It was encouraged by parents, society, school, even church.

But the problem with those goals was that you would invariably end up accomplishing your goal, and then you get a few thrilling moments of Pride and Sense of Completion. Only to realize that you are back to NOT having a goal of that caliber. Then you have to search a new goal that can meet your inner satisfaction and/or some outer form of approved success.

Things took on a turn for me though, when my father who had been pretty much a workaholic almost died when I was in my early 20s. He had lost his work-life balance. And that one experience really made me start to question whether the Strive-For-Accomplishment-Model was really worth anything.

Still, life continued, and I began to search for other more exciting modes of being. But yielded no prominent fruits. Then some time in my mid-20s, I discovered Recovery groups which held a lure over me. I wondered if this would give me something more holistic and worthy. I focused on it and it did give me some very necessary tools for basic self care which I had not known before. But I found it hard to maintain a proper balance between my online and offline existence; and also the gap between my cultural reality of living in Korea versus the more American way of thinking and seeing things that colored the culture of Recovery circles.

OK. So. Those are just some thoughts that I've been pondering in wanting to live a "better" life. Today I found a book in Amazon Kindle Store... that may or may not answer my ruminations on this.

Crossing the Nonsense Divide: Steps to Finding Your Path to a Successful Life by James Henry McIntosh.

I've read the first couple of chapters but haven't come to anything concrete yet.

Still, it does start off with some awfully thought-provoking concepts... that are worth looking into.