The Future
 

At the moment, I'm being constantly reminded to think about my future. What A-Levels to choose, What Career I would like to go into etc...
I have literally no clue what I want to do at all.

What do you think your future will be?

Death. Before that? It's anyone's guess. I don't think about it truth be told.

I think it's a shame we're taught so young to look to the future, to plan for it, to have goals and targets, it fixes our gaze on some distant abstraction rather than our immediate surroundings. In layman's terms we forget to smell the roses. Life is like a piece of sweet music - we shouldn't be too fixed on reaching the climax or the cresendo, rather we should enjoy the whole piece. Life's a journey. Not a destination. That's what I think anyway. Feel free to say I'm talking bollocks.

Do you literally write all that stuff off the top of your head? Sure, it may be bollocks, but you can certainly use metaphors.

How dare you suggest it's bollocks!!! I build my life on these philosophies, damn it. Tear 'em down and my life comes down. ;)

Just because you're so deep and "live in the moment" doesn't mean you can't have goals.

stay at my job for years, keep enjoying what i do while makin good money and gettin raises over the years. get promoted to team leader and eventually supervisor but turn down the supervisor position because i cna make more with overtime in a lesser position. marry a chick who works in a human service field who is a dimepiece. have a baby boy in like 5 years, raise him to be succesfull and awesome. move into a nice suburban home, live a great life

People can have whatever goal(s) they want. If they truly want something, they should aim for it. My concern is most goals are not really their own, but the ideas of their friends, their parents, their teachers, government, media. We're all bombarded from an early age by a plethora of messages telling us what we want, where we should aim, what we should be. It's crazy.

Alan Watts touches on it here:

realisticly, i couldn't careless about making da money, having a family, and dying of old age. seriously?

the past wasn't great. the present its worser for me. the future isn't looking so bright for dat education of mines.

nah, i'm better off pretending to fly my own private jet to a faraway place and live happily-dying laughter!

I'm either going to follow through on my dream of becoming an astrophysicist and go from there, or give up during my education and live the stupid, jobless, careless life that I wanted to a few years ago, but vowed it would never work.