Disclaimer: If you follow this as a prescription, you will get nowhere.
Humans love setting goals. It gives them something to strive for. A sense of progress. They even define themselves by their goals. What they might achieve. What they might become in the future.
This is exactly what society teaches humans.
The expectations start early. The child is measured, weighed, and judged. They are valued by their potential. Taller than average. Faster. Better at reading. Better at math. At football. At singing.
They are encouraged to pursue their talents. To push their limits. To improve.
And so,
Improvement becomes all they care about. Because it’s all their surroundings judge them by.
Goal setting is the natural consequence of this obsession with improvement. You need to know whether you were better than before. Because how else would you know your direction? Your place in the world? Your worth?
You wouldn’t know if you desperately needed to pick up the pace to reach that arbitrary milestone of yours. You wouldn’t know if you should judge yourself endlessly for falling short. You wouldn’t know if you should stress and worry about keeping up.
Sounds familiar?
Goals ultimately reinforce that you’re lacking. That you’re not yet where you need to be. They whisper, “You’re incomplete. Not enough. Not yet.”
I’m not telling you to avoid goals. I’m not telling you to do anything. I’m asking you to realize what a goal really is.
Within every goal lies a false promise. The promise that things will get better when you achieve it. When you finally reach that shining destination. But the cruel trick reveals itself the moment you arrive.
We all know the emptiness that follows the achievement. The hollowness that creeps in when you ask, “Now what?”
The high fades. The baseline returns. And now you’re faced with a choice.
Will you take the uncertain path of emptiness? No goals. No improvement. No striving. Or will you repeat the cycle?
You know exactly where the latter leads.
Set a new goal.
Chase it.
Reach it or not.
Feel empty either way.
Repeat.
But what could the other path entail?
Would you even know who you are without your goals? Without your destinations? Without the constant carrot dangling in front of you?
Your flinch reaction might be: “But how will I ever improve then? How will I ever get anywhere?”
That’s the societal belief speaking through you.
You wouldn’t lie in bed all day simply because you have no goals. That’s a fallacy. You are human. You would still have the impulse to move. To create. To explore.
You would still act, but not out of lack. Not out of insufficiency.
Not because you are trying to measure up to a self you are not yet.
The truth is this: movement does not require a destination. Life does not need a scoreboard. Growth does not need to be tracked or compared.
Consider the tree. It grows without a goal. It expands without a plan. Its existence is its justification.
But humans believe they are above this. They believe they need goals. Numbers. Metrics. Proof that their lives amount to something.
So they invent destinations. They invent ladders to climb. They invent future selves to chase.
And then they wonder why they feel restless, anxious, empty.
This is not a rejection of movement. It is not a call to stagnation. It is simply an invitation to see through the illusion.
The illusion that fulfillment lies somewhere else, sometime later.
Because the truth is merciless: it does not.
No matter how many goals you set, no matter how many you reach, the emptiness always returns.
So what happens if you stop?
What happens if you let go of the obsession with becoming?
You may discover that life continues without your desperate striving. That you continue. That you move anyway. That creation happens without the whip of self-improvement at your back.
And maybe then, for the first time, you would see what you actually are—without needing to be more.
Maybe you would notice how much of your life was wasted in the waiting room of tomorrow. Always rehearsing for the next milestone. Always postponing your presence.
What would it mean for you to stand bare, without a future to lean on?
It would feel terrifying. Because it would feel free.
And freedom is unbearable to most people. That is why they keep chasing goals. Not because they need them—but because they cannot handle the silence that comes when there are none.
But if you can, if you dare to stop chasing, something else opens.
A life that is not driven by lack, but by expression. Not by what you should become, but by what you already are.
It is quieter. Less dramatic. Harder to measure.
But it is real.
Sincerely,
Milo Morrison