Life Achievements

Birth, school, college, work, starting a family, retirement, death. If you ask people what would be the natural order of things in life, the vast majority would most certainly present you this list.

Coincidentally, or not, excluding birth and death, the other five would also be the list of achievements in life one would like to make. Although they sound logical and great goals to be attained, are they really the most important deeds one should look for in life?

If you ask me which achievements I would like to make in the next ten years I wouldn't list those five, for they would merely be consequences of the real achievements: becoming more mature, more responsible, more concerned about the world around me - and I'm talking about the big picture here: environment, politics, society, etc. Doing more for the others than for me. In fact, ten years from now I would only be satisfied if I could look back and say: “Man, I really made the difference!”

One could say that this is easier said than done. Indeed it is! Would it be an achievement otherwise? The very concept of this word involves working very hard, pulling out all the stops, persistence and, most importantly, knowing you are not doing that only for yourself; that the 'yourself' part will come as a consequence, not as the reason.

How then, would I try to succeed in doing this? By reflecting and always pondering before setting a goal. If I have to choose a job shall I choose the one that pays the most or the one where I could improve the lives of other people? Should I think first in my satisfaction in doing that job or should satisfaction be a consequence of helping people see life through a better perspective? If I want to have a family should it be because I want company or because I have something to offer them so that, then, I can have something in return?

When I stop to think about those things it becomes clear to me what I want to be doing ten years from now: being human. I don't want to be a result of predetermined and imposed values. I want to make the difference. It seems, however, that nowadays, making the difference is remembering the most basic concept of all: we are humans and we are on the same boat. If we want to actually achieve something in life it is high time we start acting and thinking as a society and forget once and for all this individualism that haunts our thinking. If we keep on believing that our actions don't cause any kind of consequences to the whole I'm not quite sure if I want to see how things will be ten years from now.