 love getting things done. Isn't it great to just get things done finished? Now today Christmas Eve is a great day to feel that because it is great to get things finished before Christmas to be able to say okay this is a natural pause in the year Christmas to New Year's this end of year pause let's get things done before Christmas so I try to get as much finished as I can so I can take this nice little break but most of the time it's just finishing things is something that I'm looking forward to it's like you have a to-do list and then you look forward to it being cleared and of course somehow it seems like no matter what the to-do list always grows I do believe it's possible to have the to-do list eventually shrink down and I'm still working towards that dream but it just seems like each day no matter what is going to bring new things to do I think a lot of this kind of achievement mindset this kind of mindset of going for goals it's something that can easily go too far into future thinking as much as all the advantages that it brings to prepare for the future in that way as great as that is as useful as it is to put off immediate gratification to be able to build for the future to have a vision for the future and work towards it it's also possible to go too far in that direction to the point where you're just living in the future it's like making a deal with yourself to say I'll be happy when I'm done if that goes too far eventually life becomes something for the future we can't live life in the future we can be building towards the future and that's a wonderful thing but my idea for today that I'm thinking about is that no matter what we have to live in the present even if we are doing all the sacrificing activities sacrificing our present desires to build something better for the future even then even if we're we're building towards the future we are still alive today even when the focus of our thoughts is on some kind of future realization something that will become better in the future and now we're suffering through difficult times in order to get something better in the future still we're alive today we still are living each day and we can't spend all our lives looking forward to the future because then eventually well not only are you then missing all the days in the present as you look to forward to each tomorrow you eventually reach the day where you don't have a tomorrow for yourself and so then the future will never be realized then you look back and say well I had all those days but each of those each of those today's I was my head was full of tomorrow my head was full of okay everything that I want today I'm putting it off to tomorrow so I think what's necessary and what I'm working on building for myself is this sense of loving the work loving the sacrifice loving what I do building towards tomorrow so it's like I have a vision for what I want my future the future to be like and in some sense it's like oh you know I'll be happy when I achieve that vision because you know that's what I want that's the life I want I'm working to build the life I want so I'll be happy when I achieve the vision but no matter what there's always another mountain on the horizon there's always some further goal that can be next after we achieve something so it's always on horizon so what I'm working on is a sense of being completely satisfied without having anything finished so I'm doing work that is far from finished and the goal is far down the road and yet I still have to live these days and I still want to be truly alive in these days in which my goals are unrealized so it's like it's a way of thinking where the road towards the goal is itself fully satisfied is complete to be simply to know that I am moving in the right direction towards what I want to achieve that needs to be enough that is the state of most of our lives these states of achieving goals that's momentary you could work towards a big goal you achieve it have a big celebration on an on one day maybe it's a huge achievement and you take a week of celebration you could take a month of celebration maybe a year of two I wonder what kind of goal would give you a year of celebration but eventually that celebration ends because that goal has been achieved it's now established and now it's moving on to the next step so these states of achievement of having finished our work and achieved our goal are very short pieces of our life but the state of striving towards a goal working towards something that's not there yet incomplete work a project on the go that is the state of almost every day of our lives and so however we want to live that however we want to live our lives we're living them in the world of unfinished work so one way or another we have to live in this state and be content with this state because this is the human state for most of our lives so it seems like I have to tell myself as much as I'm working towards the goal the goal itself is not everything simply the goal giving me that direction and giving me the the path to move down it is moving down that path that is the great joy of life as great as it is to achieve that end goal the top of the mountain it is the path up the mountain that is our lives and that is the joy