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What do you do when what you want is not achievable?

I've been trying to set myself realistic goals for where I want to be in life and trying hard to achieve them for a while now. Bear with me, I am no granola crunching hippie or some kind of new age practitioner or something... I am just a fat guy trying to not be so fat as it were. But what if you're goals are simply unachievable? I mean, what happens if you're goal is a worthy one and your work towards it admirable... but the chance of you achieving it nigh on impossible?

This week, His Holiness the Dalai Lama came to UBC and Vancouver for a conference on peace. While I am not one of those people who looks to Eastern philosophy for spiritual guidance (what with me being from the East and all), I genuinely do admire this man and his take on life. Regardless of what the official Chinese government and some others may call him, he is something of a spiritual being... someone a lot of people seem to be mesmerised by. He is no wolf in sheep's clothing as the bureaucrats in Beijing portray him to be, but he sure is something else. So nice that a whole load of kids took trains and buses and cars to go out to GM Place I think to hear him (and others) talk about peace.

He has articulated his dream of going back to Tibet for years now. But what are his chances? I mean, it is a lofty dream, it is definitely a worthy one, but realistically, what are the chances that he will ever set foot in Tibet again? In one word, none. Some revolutions will never come. Will he ever give up on the dream though? Not likely. Has his life been in vain? I don't know any more.

Sometimes, dreams are just dreams. Nice things you would like to have. Sometimes, you convince yourself they are worth your while and you pursue it pig-headedly even though you know in your mind that you are swimming against the tide and don't have a hope in hell of achieving them. And yet you pursue it like it was the only thing that mattered. Such is the human spirit. I wonder what happens to all those who spent their lifetimes into achieving their goals and ultimately failed. Do they die as unhappy souls only to be re-born into a world with a whole new purpose? Perhaps we are going into the supernatural here... but it does make me wonder.

At any rate, chase those dreams I say. Because they are what makes life worth living.
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