Goals; are they the problem?

This seems to say that when I set and head for a goal I am really turning away from it.  The more I desire something the farther away it goes.  So Zen logic says that wanting something I must let go of my desire to possess it.

This is, I feel, a difficult concept for a Westerner to understand.  I was raised in a culture that supported setting goals and then moving in a direction to realize them.  Aiming for them was supported by all the institutions that were a part of my upbringing; family, school, church, the  work world...  This is the American tradition.

When I was an undergrad student a sorority sister gave me a book on Zen Buddhism.  At the same time I discovered the book The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran.  This began my journey into Eastern thought, spirituality, and unlearning my Western thought.  It took a long time.

Learning that to not aim for a goal initially felt alien to my Western mind.  How would I ever accomplish anything without setting goals?  Over time I began to realize that it was not the goals that were the problem; it was my identifying and attaching to them that caused problems.  So, like the above cartoon, I began to understand that if I aimed for it I was turning away from it.

Therein lies the Zen, or Eastern, thought and logic, and it is diametrically opposed to Western logic.  As a child, adolescent, and in my early adult years I believed that I needed to directly take on my goals.  In some ways it became an adversarial position with this frontal attack on the goals that I had set.  I was working against me by turning toward my goals which kept them further from my grasp.

I began to learn that the goals were not the problem; my relationship to them caused me problems.  When I began to practice letting go of the outcome and not seeing my goals being achieved in certain ways, I lost my strangle hold on these goals and they lost theirs on me.  I could have goals but I realized that the journey to my goals became more important than arriving at these goals.

The path, the way, was my constant companion and teacher.  Being fully in each moment, being completely here now, became more important than my arriving at whatever goal I set.  My goals became guide posts; something to consider but I did not need to be completely defined by them as I moved on my journey.  They were helpful tools to determine my path in each moment, but they were no longer something carved in stone.  My life became easier, simpler, and gentler as I practiced this art of letting go.

Within each moment lies all that I need.  When I lose being in the moment I am filled with anxiety.  When I reconnect to the present, the now, worry and anxiety fade away, and peace fills me.  A powerful lesson that I must remember and practice each day.