How to set a target

Folklore and stories are lessons that were passed on through generations. Just like the will to survive of the giraffe that gets passed on through their DNA – it manifests in real life through their long neck. As humans, we have the luxury to not only have the will of our ancestors that is passed on through our DNA, we are also able to benefit our legacy through several mediums, such as stories, and technology.

            The fact that we can stay at home with electricity and running water is proof of the legacy of the will of our ancestors. It was their desire to improve human life that created new technologies. It is thanks to their thirst for knowledge, and their will to explore further that we are now able to keep up their work, to sustain and improve it. Just think about the fact that we have readily clean water to at our fingertips all the time. The fact that it is dependable 99% of the time is a miracle, and that is a manifestation of the will and desire of people prior(ancestors).

            Like technology, if things are not useful, they will get scrapped and forgotten.

Therefore, it is fair to believe that the things that do get passed on have substantial meaning, or at least, have a certain wisdom within them.

            What I am trying to say is that stories that transcend time have immense value. I will now explore the meaning of the crossroad devil.

            In folklore, people do come to a crossroad in order to make a pact with the devil. The story goes that normally we meet the devil at the crossroad (metaphor for a crucial breakoff point in our life) and the devil offer us a pact: he will manifest our wildest dreams in exchange for our soul. Once the pact is made the dream will manifest itself into a reality; whether we like it or not.

            Similar stories exist in all cultures. For instance, in Norse mythology we have the trickster Loki, in Christianity we have Satan, and the Greeks have Hades. There are commonalities in all these stories, which is that they grant us our wishes, but there is often a monkey’s paw effect, and the sacrifice is often tragic. In most cases the wish is based on “what everyone thinks is good”, which is fame, money, power.

            Metaphorically there is great wisdom in this story. As it means that when we are obsessive and dead set on something, when there is no leeway for change or space for error, that is when things usually go really bad.

            If the target is the only thing we want to manifest, and we don’t change and adapt according to a situation, quite often the result of the sacrifice will be something that we are not willing to bear. Since the world around us changes all the time, including the environment and the values around us, if we don’t “update” or correct the course of our target, we’ll end up somewhere worse.

            When the target becomes an obsession, which means that our desire is based on results and results alone, quite often we will be blind to all other elements in life. This means we lose the ability to have True Free Will. Interestingly, I think this is where the story of exchange of soul comes from.

            True free will is a hard thing to achieve, as we may act out of constructed beliefs we have adopted from other people. We may sometimes also react to situations in a fashion that is similar to how our parents would react. We may have addictive personalities or we may be agitated due to hunger. We might jump to conclusions too soon because our IQ is too high and we analyse everything too quickly. Or we may react out of anger, excitement or sorrow. Maybe the action is purely made out of resentment.

            The main point is, if our decision making is not based on our hierarchy of values, the decisions we make are not really ours.

Let me give an example. Out of our society’s constructed belief of “you need a flat to have security”, we made a target out of the obsession of getting a flat. We tend to want to pay our mortgage as soon as possible. We work overtime so that we are able to maximise our payment – which means it leaves us with no time for our family. It causes enormous stress, and we end up lashing out to our loved ones. In order for us to be in a better financial situation we may use lies and deceit to move up the career ladder, thus causing us to devalue ourselves, and deviate from the truth.

All of these are examples of the monkey’s paw effect on the deal – the target of the flat becomes the source of pain. This is when we make a target that is out of a constructed belief that doesn’t belong to us. The target is not aligned with our truth.

By truth I mean the truth according to our own value. When we pay attention to the words that come out of our mouth, the actions we do, we KNOW when they are not in alignment. There is an inner voice that tells us “You don’t believe that, that is not true, you are saying things that you don’t truly believe in”. Or the voice of regret that says “I shouldn’t have done that”. The worst case is when we do things that we know is wrong, and we do them anyway. Like smokers, they know that it is damaging to their health, they know they should quit, yet they continue to smoke. Another common one will be the thought that tells us “you can’t do it” – we feel upset because deep down we know that statement is not true.

Let’s look at the same examples when our target is made in alignment with our own true value. Our target is to get a flat, but actually, the base of that desire is coming from creating security for our family. Since this target is based on an inner value, and not a physical target, we allow room for error and flexibility. If our daughter is in a play where our attendance is important, we will happily sacrifice the opportunity for career advancement by working overtime to attend that play. Even if our career tales longer time to advance,  we are happy to choose that route because we believe that empowering our value trumps the shortcut that is caused by lies and deceit. If a situation arises that shows that our family will have a better future if we relocate to another country, we will be more than glad to give up the pursuit of said flat.

This is because the family is the target, not the flat. The flat is just a tool, just like wealth, fame and power are supposed to be tools, not the value itself.

It can adapt with time and allow space for error; thus, the target is able to shift and change.

Our target is supposed to act like we are playing a game of “Marco, Polo”. We stumble in life while orienting on the truth that resonates with us, although the journey may take a longer time, the experience and lessons we learn along the way will prepare us so we can embrace situations when the chips are down (when things are tough).

Life is supposed to be a labyrinth, we orient ourselves to the centre, we journey on to learn, and when we reach the centre, we will find the meaning of life.

To know where our own value lies, we need to look no further than the people we admire. The simple fact that we admire them means there is a value within them that resonates with us. The key is not to copy their beliefs, because by doing that we will also adopt something that is not ours as an anchor. The belief that they created is theirs and theirs alone, but the value we admire is truthful to us.

Now, I would like to give another example of a person’s journey that used others’ beliefs as his own, this is a true story, by the way.

There was a person, who was not at all articulate, and never straightened out his values.

He was quite angry because he just came back from war, and witnessed many of his friends die. Then he was unemployed, so, he tried to chase his passion, but that didn’t work out even though he was moderately talented.

To make things worse the economy of the country fell apart completely, and the political climate was in disarray. So, you can imagine he was not the happiest person.

He then starts talking to people that were not that happy either due to their circumstances, which made him decide he wanted to become a politician to seek power.

While he was talking to the angry crowd, he had no clue what he was upset about, but luckily for him, neither did the crowd. However, this person was good at interacting with the crowd, and he was charismatic, so he started to try out some new ideas. Some of these could fall flat but as he was closely paying attention to the crowd, he slowly stopped saying things that didn’t work. Some of his ideas, however, really made the crowd wake up and listen, so he then started saying similar ideas.

His goals, language and decision making were based according to the reaction of the crowd. Due to the fact he had no ideas linked to his values, and he kept on talking to the crowd thousands of times, the crowd exponentially grew around him. This crowd started telling him he was the saviour of the nation, which made him believe it. This led him to believe that these ideas that made the crowd go crazy were actually his own values. So he began to carry them out.

That person focused on power, and made decisions out of society’s reaction without sorting out his own values first. That person’s name is Adolf Hitler.

Things tend to go bad if we don’t sort out our values before we set a target. If our target is based on society’s values instead of our own it tends to make things worse. If the target and the target alone becomes the obsession that when we create a highway to hell.

There is a Chinese proverb “If the waters are too clean; there is no fish”. Which vaguely means if we take things too rigidly life cannot be sustained.

This, I think, means life is about change, so embrace the opportunity to let go of your constructed belief. In doing so we learn new skills, and like a phoenix, we will be reborn from the ashes of our old self.

P.S If you would like to know tools to discover your own “truth” and “value”, please refer to my other article – “Tools to create the joy of life”