Every whole person has dreams and desires. Many of us believe that achieving these dreams will bring us satisfaction or fulfillment or contentment.
The truth is that, yes, you can reach your dreams and feel fulfilled; you can accomplish everything you desire and become satisfied.
But only for a short while.
You see, accomplishment is ephemeral. What’s impressive and exciting today is often easy—even infantile—tomorrow. There are millions of examples to illustrate this point: tying your shoe for the first time, dribbling a basketball between your legs, an awkward first kiss. Over time, people grow, and with growth comes grace and poise and also, most importantly, the responsibility to keep growing.
Growth is not unlike an elusive horizon: you can travel toward it, but you’ll never “get there”; there will always be a new horizon to venture toward. Similarly, we should all work toward an ideal for every area of our lives: an ideal body, an ideal diet, ideal relationships, an ideal work environment, etc. While doing this, we must realize that we’ll never reach our ideal. Or if we do, it won’t be our ideal situation for long, because human beings yearn to grow, and thus that which is ideal today likely won’t be ideal tomorrow.
Hence, you can achieve and accomplish whatever you desire, but the key to lasting happiness is continued growth. Keep going, keep moving forward, keep heading toward the horizon. You’ll never get there, but that’s okay.
