“And when Alexander saw the breadth of his domain, he wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer. Benefits of a classical education.” – Hans Gruber in Die Hard
Alexander the Great loved chewing bubblegum and conquering Persians. And he’s all out of Persians. And bubblegum wasn’t invented until 2,251 years after he died. Poor Alexander.
One thing that I think holds people back isn’t that they plan, it’s that they don’t plan big enough. I’ve been fortunate enough in my life that I’ve made most of my goals come true. That may sound like a good thing, but is it?
Of course it is. It’s really cool to be able to be successful at achieving your goals, because losing sucks, and if you have great goals you end up with Cash and Prizes®.
But what would happen one day if I looked around and said . . . “I’ve done it. I’ve accomplished everything I’ve set out to do.” What purpose is left to drive me? And if I did reach all of my dreams, what’s left to work for?
An example of exactly this happening is Buzz Aldrin. At the age of 39, Buzz walked on the Moon. The frikking Moon. It’s so difficult and expensive to do, we can’t do it today. Yet Buzz was the second guy to walk on the Moon. As a goal it’s awesome. But like the miniature schnauzer that catches a Humvee®, what do you do once you’ve won? Buzz didn’t have a clue, but he didn’t have a problem asking Jack Daniels™ for assistance.
Another example is General George S. Patton. Patton had been a highly competent general in World War II – daring, audacious, and cromulent. Yet, he found himself in a position where the war that he knew how to fight was gone – it was over. In his diary he wrote: “Yet another war has come to an end, and with it my usefulness to the world.”
Little known fact: French tanks in World War II had rear view mirrors. Those were so they could observe the front line.
But Patton and Aldrin aren’t alone with this conundrum of having their success be the source of their discontent – you see this behavior again and again. It’s a common story in Hollywood: nobody to somebody to discovered cocaine to dead. Or, if the actor has a heart made of titanium, they become beloved actor Robert Downey, Jr. The most interesting part of that is the cocaine, especially to Robert Downey, Jr. Although you might think cocaine comes from Colombia, it really comes from the boredom of having everything you want.
It’s curious that one of the things that keeps us healthy and not developing a liver the size of Johnny Depp is the struggle to achieve a goal. In the absence of meaningful goals, bad things happen to people. They drink too much. They vote for the Left. They get depressed – why get out of bed when there’s nothing to work for?
Goals are important – and there are two ways that you can lose them:
- Believe that they are impossible and give up, or
- Achieve them all and run out of goals.
Essentially these are the opposite problems – one is believing you’ve got to play a football game against the 1985 Chicago Bears® using 11 toddlers. The other is being on the 1985 Chicago Bears© and playing 11 toddlers.
I know it’s a soccer ball in the trophy. It’s not like the Cowboys® would recognize a real football.
Both are no-win outcomes. Toddlers cannot run a receiving pattern at all. And they cannot hold a block long enough for their toddler-quarterback to get a decent pass off. And if you’re the 1985 Chicago Bears™, what’s the best thing that could happen? You beat a bunch of toddlers. I mean, it’s fun and all, but it’s hardly a greater achievement than defeating the Dallas Cowboys© or a school for ten-year-old girls that lisp.
A goal is required for good mental health. The very best goals require that you work at your limits, pushing yourself to become better. They’re goals that you believe you can achieve. And they’re goals where you can see a path to make them become real. And the best part of the goal is at the end, after you’ve achieved it, if you plan ahead you’ve got another goal waiting.
One of the waitresses at Hooters® lost a leg in a car accident last week. She now has a job at IHOP™.
As I mentioned in Wednesday’s post (Playing The Game, And Goals For Life) I had goals, just not work-related goals. I’ve been working to create some, and I’m not there yet. That’s okay. The goals have to be meaningful. And I’m not working without a net – I have sufficient goals out in front of me that even if I couldn’t work out a work goal, I have plenty of others. Is having a cup of fresh, hot coffee a good goal? Dangit. Back to the drawing board.
So, what about these great men who had everything when they accomplished the goals of a lifetime?
Patton’s uncharacteristic self-pity in the quote from his diary was the result of his achievement – the war was won, and he contributed to the Allied victory on the Western Front. He had fame. Only 11 men had ever had a higher rank in the military. From what I read about Patton, I’m willing to bet that he would have been able to channel himself into a post-war United States without too much difficulty.
Would he have been a politician? Hard to say. It’s unlikely that he would have the desire to speak pretty little lies just to get elected. But you can bet one thing – if he hadn’t died, Patton would have done his level best to shake up the United States. I wouldn’t bet against him.
And what about Buzz Aldrin? Buzz crawled into a bottle and managed to skip most of the 1970’s. Admittedly, that wasn’t a bad decade to skip since not having a memory of the Bee Gees® is something some people would pay for. At some point I believe that he managed to come to a truce with the Moon. He decided to instead focus on making money for himself and to be a spokesman for his cause: “Get your ass to Mars®.” Is being a celebrity spokesmodel as exciting as going to the frikking Moon? Certainly not. But you might as well be comfortable if you flew to the frikking Moon.
Buzz Aldrin sadly got divorced in the 1970’s. Apparently his wife needed space, too.
But Hans Gruber got it wrong. Plutarch actually wrote:
Alexander wept when he heard from Anaxarchus that there was an infinite number of worlds; and his friends asking him if any accident had befallen him, he returns this answer: “Do you not think it a matter worthy of lamentation that when there is such a vast multitude of them, we have not yet conquered one?”
In this case, Alexander is saying the exact opposite of the Hans Gruber quote – that he had a goal to conquer an entire world, but wept because his dream wasn’t yet complete. The moral of the story?
Maybe if Hans knew his Plutarch better he might have not fallen off the Nakatomi Plaza Tower.
The goal of being rich is a good starter goal:
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/follow-these-5-rules-and-you-can-become-rich-2020-01-29
The goal of being happy is a better one:
https://aboutleaders.com/goals-happiness-success/#gs.vqrkmc
The goal your granddaughter makes after kicking her way upfield can be the best goal of all.
That might be the best goal . . . indeed!
I’ve achieved my goal of surviving to this point. It’s an honorable goal with a guaranteed end. If I’d known I would achieve this goal to this point, I doubt I’d change anything, or write a cliche like “If I’d known I’d live this long, I would have taken better care of myself”. My current goal is to figure out how to put the mark above the “e” in cliche. That would make me think I achieved something today.
Jess, if you have a Mac, you just need to hold down the key until all of the accented alternative pop up. I just discovered this, after owning a Mac for over 10 years. Mind-blowing!
Cliché
I want all of my organs to expire at the same time. My lungs are good – I should maybe take up smoking.
Check out The Happiness Lab podcast by Dr. Laurie Santos and by Malcolm Gladwell and Pushkin Industries. Similar themes as Mr. Wilder regarding goals and what happens when you do or don’t achieve them.
Recommended.
‘Cromulent’, John Wilder? Yeah, I know. You were just testing to see who is paying attention. Of all the various encomiums, euphemisms and epithets used to describe General Patton through the decades by both friend and foe alike, I am reasonably certain you are the first to describe the man as ‘cromulent’. Not sure if he would wish to thank you for that or leave deep tank treadmarks gouged longitudinally along your prone carcass for associating his legacy with an old Simpsons episode.
I see that you are on about the whole ‘goals’ thing again, with a hefty side dish of ‘planning’. In my life, I’ve aimed high, I’ve aimed low, planned a little, planned a lot. Somehow, I always manage to end up somewhere in the middle. The curse (or blessing) of mediocrity has fashioned me into a humble, yet snarky fellow. Still 99% shy of my financial goals, but at least I don’t have to sweat an encore.
Unlike poor astronaut Aldrin. Somehow, though, with a nickname of ‘Buzz’ I suspect that he was already receiving a Christmas card from the Jack Daniel distillery long before he hiccuped his way to the moon (good thing Collins was driving). I’ve used an a$$load of excuses for my own impressive boozing through the years, but “I went to the moon” and “I defeated Nazi Germany” are nowhere to be found in the canon.
No, he’d drive through my house – that would be more fitting.
My best excuse was, “If I don’t finish it, it’ll go bad.”
“The frikking Moon. It’s so difficult and expensive to do, we can’t do it today.”
We coulda had the beginning of the Federation of Planets. Instead we chose diversity and egalitarianism.
Ahhh, to be an interplanetary species. One day.
Mad props to you, sir, for “cromulent.” Drove me right to the dictionary, and I’m all too willing to boast about my command of my native language. However, I agree with a commenter above that Patton might well consider that you’ve damned him with faint praise.
Now, about that s—thole country that sends us cocaine: that’s Colombia, not Columbia. Columbia, District of, is where cocaine is consumed, not produced.
And, by the way, I hereby serve notice on that other person who commented once (that I saw) as “James” that he’s on the clock. I moved over to “James the Son of Thunder” as a courtesy, to avoid confusion. If he doesn’t start using “James” again pretty soon, I’m going back to it. It gets tedious, typing the whole Son of Thunder thing all the time.
I would NOT have caught Colombia. Fixed. Thank you.
Methinks Patton would not have fared as well as you may think in The Land of the Big PX (or is it Big PC?)…
“All military governments are going to be targets from now on for every sort of Jewish and Communistic attack from the press.
My self esteem would be better had I simply asked for immediate retirement but then any thing I said in the future could be attributed to revenge…
“At the moment I feel pretty mad.”
Letter to Beatrice (29 September 1945), published in The Patton Papers (1996), edited by Martin Blumenson, Vol. 2 , p. 787
“In the second place, Harrison and his ilk believe that the Displaced Person is a human being, which he is not, and this applies particularly to the Jews, who are lower than animals.”
Diaries, General Patton : A Soldier’s Life (2002) by Stanley P. Hirshson, p. 661
No, in 2020 he would have been in quite a bit of trouble. I imagine he would have thrown quite a few bombs even in 1946.
Although you might think cocaine comes from Columbia, it really comes from the boredom of having everything you want.
There’s so many books to read, games to play, , gardens to grow, things to draw, and to learn, and to think about, it seems strange that anyone could ever be bored. And that’s just if you’re poor-ish. If you have money there’s a whole world to explore.
Certes, if you’re naturally ambitious (most normal men?) you’ll want a good target (or targets) to aim at. But…
I’m having a hard time wrapping my brain around this.
Scott Adams, wrote about the superiority of systems over goals. So, for example, you work on being the kind of gal who can attract a Sam Gamgee, gain the skills to be a productive wife, mother and householder, and cultivate a love for small town life, family meals, small kids and large gardens and hey presto… Your goal of having Rosie Cotton’s life isn’t really something you can call done until you’ve finished living it.
Just having things coming down the line to plan for: short, medium and long term … Do they count as goals, or just responsibilities? Is it a goal just if you don’t have to do it?
You’re right about Adams – he feels if you haven’t gotten to your goal, you’re in a state of failure. But your system has to point in a direction, and you have to be able to check that it’s working . . . (really, really good observation)
Somehow, success and happiness have been merged and turned into a never ending orgy of pinnacle moments. At least for some. The real question for me is whether this applies to all super ‘type A’ persons or is it applicable to a select few.
Further, why do we seek fame, conquest, massive wealth and adoration? The vast majority of happy people who are successful in all of these do so in moderation and manage to balance their personal and professional lives well enough to avoid the pitfalls of the extremes.
I think that many who wander that knife edge of humanity such as the examples given are also suffering some mental problems that drive them to such heights. Did Alexander the great achieve for his own glory or for the glory of his nation? Did Patton drive his armies into Germany and victory solely for the good of the world or did he do it for his own satisfaction and glory? The inner motive of people such as this has to be convoluted and interwoven and even to themselves, they must have had a hard time finding the happiness they sought.
It is admirable to be an achiever. Our nation as well as the entire world would not be as nice a place to be if the quest for achievement and success had not been pursued with the vigor that it has been. Even so, how does one ‘rest on their laurels’? When is ‘Enough’ enough? How much of the drive to continue is based on the fear of failure and falling into the abyss of forgotten heroes and the fall from the limelight?
Ultimately, the balance in life of all things is the most difficult to achieve and the more gifted people are in ability and the desire to succeed the more difficult it is for them to find peace of mind. This said, we enjoy our victors we see but I am sure we appreciate those people in our lives who really have found balance even more. People like that are rocks that can be leaned on and counted on and as history has shown repeatedly, the high achievers tend to self destruct once their time at the pinnacle of their success is over.
Yeah, the last CEO of the company I worked at looked . . . deflated on his last day. Not the same person at all.
Ultimately, the balance in life
Oh, balance in life. I read that as balance with wife and thought, ” That’s a big plate of bacon cheeseburgers. ” She isn’t really that big, but it’s at least two large meals: sandwich, fries and strawberry milkshake.
Hey, I should retroactively ask for a dowry on The Mrs.: her weight in bacon cheeseburgers.
I’m not . . . . never mind
Those aren’t a readily acceptable means of exchange, John. Around a campfire over cards, yes, but not for a car or business jet. Not in my experience, anyway, which is admittedly limited.
Hey . . . that’s an amazing idea – let’s price jets in burgers. I prefer the cheddar whopper, so . . . (doing the math) it’s more than one. (it’s late)
The look of fear on Hans Grubers face as he fall is genuine. The actor had a fear of heights. They told him a stunt man was going to do the fall. They lied and an awesome scene was shot
Yup, “We’ll go on three. One . . . two (go).”