Never stop challenging yourself everyday. Life is not meant to be trudged along a straight path. It is an intricate system of crossroads, of which at each stop you are tasked to make a decision. Everyday is an opportunity to live the life as we want it. You wake up in the morning you choose whether to get up as soon as you open your eyes or not. You get up and you decide whether to fix the bed first or head straight for breakfast. Seated at the dining table you decide whether it's gonna be cereals or sandwich. And, oops, you run out of cereals and you're already running late for work so you just took a quick sip of coffee and headed for the shower. A few minutes later you get dressed, get groomed and all set for work. And the story of your life goes on. Tomorrow is another day.

Funny if you would look at the big picture and try to imagine each and everyone of us having to go through the same ordeal every single day - we just don't really notice it because it has been a routine for some time. And we, human beings, are hard-wired for automatic responses. It's amazing how life works. But if I'm gonna dig deeper into these thoughts, what I have observed is that, every single people on the planet is driven by a force. It is a thing that manifests in us as a "goal." Without a goal we lose the drive to do anything. People are destined to have something to look forward to in the end. It can be a reward. It can be a punishment. It can be a positive or a negative reinforcement. Either way it's comforting knowing something has a definite time frame for when it's gonna end whether in a good or bad way. This thing - the religious people would often term "god" or some other deity names still depending on who's preaching what is morally right or wrong. The scientists would call it an "idea" which brings forth subsequent discoveries. The romanticists would refer to it as "love" which gives a person a reason to justify his actions. Nonetheless, it all pushes us into having a goal.

"Living on purpose is the only way to really live. Everything else is just existing." - Rev. Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Life

A goal sets us apart from machines. A goal sets us apart from animals driven by their instinctive need for survival. A goal somehow gives us direction, a sense into the world we're living - into the life where we're fated to take part of. And sometimes, you just need that something to hold on to.