Being goal-orientated is fine and well — except it’s easy to get to looking so hard for one thing that you start to miss the multitude of opportunities right in front of your face.
It is a fine line to walk, sure, and I plead to being more often than not on the wrong side of it. I haven’t yet figured out how to overcome this apparently inbuilt tendency to obsess about plans rather than staying receptive to the universe, but being aware of the problem is the first step towards finding a solution.
Perhaps you seek too much, that as a result of your seeking you cannot find…. When someone is seeking… it happens quite easily that he only sees the thing that he is seeking; that he is unable to find anything, unable to absorb anything, because he is only thinking of the thing he is seeking, because he has a goal, because he is obsessed with his goal. Seeking means: to have a goal; but finding means: to be free, to be receptive, to have no goal.
– Hermann Hesse ‘Siddhartha’
