For MAnvi, some thoughts randomly occur and they go buzzing in her head for a few days. When it is ready to be expressed, her go-to person is her thAthA. Well, as for his availabity for her, it is as though he knows that she is ready to approach him. A different relationship certainly!!

MAnvi: Should one have a measurable goal or not, thAthA?

thAthA (smiling): Is there a right and / or a wrong, MAnvi?

MAnvi (with a reciprocating smile): thAthA, though I love this banter, you can’t answer a question with more than one question 🙂

thAthA: What made you ask that question on goals, MAnvi?

MAnvi:  There are times when people ask

– What’s your goal in life?

– How do you see yourself after 5 years or 10 years?

– What do you want to achieve in life?

thAthA, if I say that I don’t have a goal, then some people think that not having a goal is not ok. I am like, “Why is it not ok? If it is ok for you to have a goal, why isn’t it ok for me not to have one? Why isn’t it ok for me to live one day at a time?

thAthA: Go on, Manvi. I am with you.

MAnvi: All of us want to do well in life and we want to achieve something in life. Some of us maybe clear on what that something is and some of us may not be. Some may not be clear now but maybe clear a few years later.. and some maybe clear now but confused after a few years because of certain experiences at their end. In fact, some of us may have a goal that is so differnt from what is expected.

Life is so evolving, thAthA.

thAthA: You appear to be uncomfortable about these questions on goals – what is the discomfort for? That people are asking something that you don’t have an answer for? or in your experience the answer you give, isn’t the answer people are happy to hear?

Her thAthA’s questions made her silent for a few minutes.

MAnvi: thAthA, the only answer I have to all the questions on goals is, “living happy with what I have” – that’s how I see myself everyday, that is how I see myself after 5 or 10 years, that’s what I want to achieve everyday.

thAthA, people ask, “How can you be so happy with small achievements in life? You should aim big. You should keep plotting where you are on the graph.”

Not everything in life needs to be measured, thAthA. Big, small, 5 years, 10 years, plot, graph etc.,

Each one of us is different. If I am happy with whatever I have today, I am living my goal everyday, isn’t it? And if I do that everyday, that’s what I will be even after 5 to 10 years.

thAthA: MAnvi, happiness isn’t measurable and that makes some uncomfortable. Happiness isn’t something one works hard for, it needs to be felt – that makes it difficult for some to accept because they think that a goal needs to be toiled for. Happiness isn’t something that is achieved, it is here in this moment. We just need to be in it. Happiness is not a journey for it to have a start or an end, it is a continuum. For some, they need to see themselves at a destination point. For them, there is a start and an end.

MAnvi, living happiness is such a powerful journey. If that’s how you want to live, live it!!

Both MAnvi and her thAthA were ‘living’ in silence after that last statement of thAthA. Each one in their own thoughts – MAnvi, with the clarity she received and her thAthA, at MAnvi’s thoughts.