Dear Editor:

We all begin life setting goals without understanding what that means. From age 24 hours until we are walking, our goal is to get what we need to survive – food, water, affection, love and joy — money has no meaning. Our brain grows by figuring out what options we have to achieve these goals. Walking and talking quickly take over and we learn we can get things for ourselves. Goals set and goals met. Today there are goal-setting classes beginning at age 3 — “I can do it!” are lessons by Kristen Granger and Mary Anne Duggan, PhD. Classes become more sophisticated as we age.

Soon it seems that goals become brain food leading to our purpose in life. We work for achievement of every dream, including the dream of life’s extension through our children. Remarkably a BBC article states that Helen Briggs’ May 2014 report reflects this same purpose in life adds years to our lives. Until retirement, a large number of our goals are set for us — school, work, budgets, kids, grandkids and others as time moves forward.

Retirement takes a former cheerleader to public service until a lifetime dream of an African Safari comes true. It takes a newspaper editor out of the world of deadlines into the open world of expressive music. It takes a mother of 10 children to a world of quilts, creative writing and direct democracy — none of these were on our youthful list of goals. It is possible that goal setting increases our chances to live longer and the gift of time staves off death — but not always.

Cancer can be an interrupter of life or not. At 36, Dr. Paul Kalanithi had a future full of goals and dreams that were shortened to a certain unknown time of death. Still he found a new purpose — memory and words. In “When Breath Becomes Air,” he left messages for his new daughter. For him, it was not how long he would live that mattered — for the ladder of his goals of life had flattened out. More important was how well he lived. Do goals provide our extension of life, or are they the soul of where true meaning can be found?

Jarryl Larson

Edgecomb