Thread by @meekaale

while preparing for the @CompliceGoals goal-crafting initiative I am really coming to understand more what a GOAL is and how those things are supposed to function in life

they haven't really been a big EXPLICIT part of my life ever

in my typical overintellectualizing way I will refer to David Abram's invocation of Merleau-Ponty's identification of the temporal future with the HORIZON

it seems that a GOAL needs to be something that you can "see" on the "horizon" even if not literally as a nomadic traveller

Merleau-Ponty is all about the "intentionality of the body" as it moves and grasps and strives for an "optimal grip" on a situation and so on

being in a landscape, finding one's way, navigating by landmarks and stars and a felt sense of something salient & important over yonder

in terms of Ratcliffe's "Experiences of Depression", a depressed being is deprived of horizon, there is a "fog" that mutes the landmarks, hides the lighthouses, the ground is just ugly mud and stupid dirt, no yellow brick roads of salience

we live by these phenomenological embodied navigation metaphors already in phrases like "aiming for the stars" and "seeing the light in the tunnel", "losing one's compass" and so on

so another word for "goal" could be "destination", just that then you get into the whole thing about "the journey itself is home" because a destination suggests a finality and settledness that may not inspire in the right way

but just the simple thing of a goal being a certain TYPE of structured intentionality, not just any kind of "large scale desire"

so "being more organized" is to me not an ACTUAL goal, but "shiny, neat, beautiful workshop" is, because I can SEE IT and it's DEEPLY APPEALING!

"being more organized" does not put my body into a state of active engaged intentionality, it just sounds vaguely bureaucratic and virtuous in a dull way

but when I envision the workshop in its dream state, then my body already knows what to do, it can barely wait

so I think a "goal" can't be some kind of imposition that you just invent or decide, because then it's not actually "on the horizon"

you have to LOOK TOWARDS the horizon and FIND the goals

which suggests that Gendlin's Focusing is a way to see what your goals actually are, instead of just "deciding" on them

"Your body, with its sense of rightness, knows what would feel right."

https://twitter.com/meekaale/status/1339819314841567232

because the goals are already there IMPLICITLY and DIMLY and the thing is to become AWARE of them and SYMBOLIZE them in order to NAVIGATE and ATTUNE

this is also why I find @AgnesCallard's "aspiration" so interesting, because it thematizes this situation of attuning to values that are perceived dimly and confusingly, in a way that contrasts with the stereotypical "rational agent" for whom values are already clear and distinct