Superfluidity

It's important to have fundamental goals in life. You can't pursue too many goals at once, and you only get one life, so you need to choose your goals with care.

So far, I've pursued two fundamental goals: survival and propagation. And I'm happy with the progress I've made: I'm not dead yet and, having fathered two children, my genes will swim in the pool for at least one more generation.

I am not interested in further propagation, leaving survival as my only remaining life goal. Survival is the most important goal but, thankfully, at this stage in my life it is not a very challenging goal. Nor is it, by itself, a very inspiring goal.

I therefore need a new fundamental goal in my life. And not just any goal will do.

Propagation was, for me, a very challenging goal, so I'd like my new goal to be at least as challenging. Otherwise I'm afraid I'll just coast through the remainder of my increasingly pointless life until I die from boredom. Of course, some goals, such as achieving world peace or eradicating stupidity from the world, are too challenging, recipes for despair and depression. One must be realistic.

A good goal, like propagation, should also be fulfilling. Dying with the most money would not fulfill me. Nor, if I'm honest with myself, would devoting my life exclusively to serving others. An ideal goal would fulfill both my selfish and my selfless sides -- something propagation managed to do.

A good goal must be compatible with my talents, personality and predilections. Otherwise I'd be doomed to unhappiness and failure. Again, one must be realistic. How likely is it that I'll reform my weaknesses over the latter half of my life? It's best to play to one's strengths.

Avoid vague goals like "I want to be happy." Wishing won't make it so. Instead of wishing for happiness, dig deep to determine which goals are sufficiently fundamental to you that their pursuit and attainment are likely to support, and be supported by, everything, or nearly everything, one does in a happy life. Survival is obviously the most fundamental goal, and for most people propagation is a close second. Both tend to support, and be supported by, a happy life. On the other hand, the pursuit of pure pleasure is, for most, a bad goal, for its pursuit usually leads to an unhappy life. Similarly, the pursuit of a very narrow or shallow goal, such as hitting the most home runs or being the most photographed model or doing anything that gets you in the Guinness Book of World Records, can easily twist one's life into a sickeningly distorted perversion, bereft of all but the most ephemeral happiness.

So, you see, it's not easy to choose a life goal. I suspect many never do. Others, once they achieve their initial goals of surviving and propagating, drift along without goals, their lives descending into meaninglessness, irrelevance and bitterness, relieved only by senescence and death.

I don't want that so, after giving this much thought, I've decided my new life goal is to achieve superfluidity. Not to be confused with superfluity, a very different goal, superfluidity is an unusual state of matter characterized by a frictionless flow. This state of matter has so far been observed only in liquid helium cooled down near absolute zero, but I hope over my remaining years to develop my own permanent state of frictionless flow.

Superfluidity is like the Taoist ideal of wu-wei, action without action. It's akin to what athletes call the "zone," their elusive source of effortless achievement. It's losing yourself, it's a state of grace, it's nirvana, the ultimate melding of thoughts, senses, abilities and actions into a perfect harmony of living.

You might think superfluidity is too challenging a goal, that I should try something easier like feeding the world or curing cancer. But I've already experienced superfluidity: when I, a poor golfer, hit a 300 yard drive down the middle of the fairway without even trying, or when I, as a beginning tennis player, aced my tennis coach with a booming serve down the T without before I knew what I was doing, or when I, as a student with a history of poor grades, suddenly achieved the highest grades when I stopped thinking so much, or when I, as a blogger suffering writer's block, wrote my favorite post -- all 1,000+ words of it -- straight through in less than one hour without changing a word, I felt the frictionless flow of superfluidity. I am confident I'll feel it again, and, with the right focus, I'm hopeful that one day it will arrive and decide never to leave me.

Superfluidity may seem to be a selfish goal, but I have a feeling that, once attained, my inner enlightenment will serve as a beacon to the world, selflessly lighting the way to a better tomorrow.

Starting today, my new life goals are survival and superfluidity. What are yours?

Comments

[DarkoV]

Over the holidays I attended a funeral service for a family acquaintance. Not someone very close, but an individual that seemed on the periphery of many conversations. When talk trailed off to the old neighbourhood, he was the omnipresent ghost. A good ghost; I'll call him Casper for lack of imagination.
Casper's funeral was well-attended, especially considering the social commitments most of us had over the holidays. The eulogy was delivered by a series of his close friends, known to me more by face than by interaction. The short remembrances were revelations. Casper had done much good in his life, specifically after his kids left the roost. For the last 30 years of his active life he was not necessarily a changed person. Rather, he was quiter busy living up to his pontifications on public service, delivered in his youth. He spent the greyer years of his life working intensely for his eulogy. I mean this in the kindest and most appreciative way.
My kids haven't yet broken from the maternal teat, but I've resolved to work toward my eulogy. The path toward the end is (hopefully) far away but it's in sore need of sweeping...

[Monjo]

Wife and children. Plus I would like to see Liverpool FC win the English Premierleague before I die.

[Bill]

My greatest concern having raised two sons, one still living and one lost to a freak accident, is to leave an intellectual legacy for the rest of the world. It is not that I have such great thoughts, but that having gone to the work of creating them and refining them, I would like them to have a life beyond me.

Superfluidity is only an attribute, as your post hints. Will you play golf, or tennis?

[Marvin]

Superfluidity sounds exactly like the concept of "mastery" that I fell in love with after reading in high school Musashi's Book of Five Rings (a translation aimed at businesspeople wanting to compete better with the Japanese). It is simultaneously the consequence of following a "Way" and perfecting oneself by means of it; paradoxically it is also, in a Buddhist sense, an attribute of our must natural manner of being in the world (but difficult to see or attain because of our egos, needs, desires, fears, and so on). I'm certainly no master, but I still love the idea. One might also call the goal that of being virtuous in a classical Greek sense of the word. Good luck!

[docdroid]

This sounds like Csikszentmihalyi's "Flow - The Psychology of Optimal Experience". I've experienced it several times playing sports, in my younger days. Concentration is at it's highest level, you comprehend all aspects of the situation. You know what's going to happen and you make the right moves effortlessly. Then you "wake" up and stumble around trying to get the feeling back again.

It has been a goal of mine for some time now: getting to that state more often, for longer periods and not just in sporting activites.

[Vanessa]

To notice things, because I've taken the time to really look at them. More difficult than you think, and more worthwhile than you think, also.