Life Goals

"Most people live life as though they were trying to arrive at death as safely as possible."

—Francis Chan

This really captures the tension I feel, between well-intentioned people constantly cautioning against risk and wishing me safety and the general discontented feeling always running beneath my surface, like an underground stream eroding away the soil under the structure of the status quo.

As I sort through who I am and what I want, it's really hard to come out from underneath people's expectations for my life, without throwing the baby out with the bath water. Where is true wisdom? Who do we listen to? The church? The culture around us? Our parents? Our pastors? Our friends? Books?

The world seems to have a complete system of how to arrive safely at death. The mindset seems to be to insulate yourself from as much pain or suffering as possible, have contingency plans in place for the adversity you can't control or avoid, and try to survive through life the best you can without rocking the boat or risking too much.

There's a balance, for sure, between responsibilities and risk. I'm not sure how to find it, and I know that I am currently in a season of life without a lot of personal responsibilities (no wife, no children, no mortgage, etc.), but I live without any even calculated risks or adventure. I could understand that if certain responsibilities meant sacrificing that freedom and spontaneity. But without those current responsibilities, I'm constantly at a loss for why my life seems so planned and scheduled, and that discontentment eats at me.

Is that the point of life? Just getting to the end? Just making it safely to death at an old age?

Something about that just doesn't sit well with me at all. I can't put my finger on it...