The moment I realised I'd never meet any of my goals was also the most liberating one

About a year ago, I went down to London to watch A Little Life play, based on the book of the same title by Hanya Yanigihara (one of the most heartbreaking, devastating but exceedingly beautiful things I have read and watched, by the way, and highly recommend).

The starring role is played by James Norton, whose performance in every moment of that play is exceptional. (Then again, his performance in every moment of anything he does - Happy Valley, Grantchester, War and Peace - is exceptional. He's also absolutely gorgeous!)

I left the play a total mess - full of feeling and grubby, weepy tears for how much the play moved me.

But underneath all of the astounded amazement I felt for the sheer brilliance of the the actors, the book, the theatre adaptation and the entire production was another worse, heavier, naggier feeling:

that I would never be as successful or skilled as James Norton;

that I would never have as profound an impact on anything or anyone as Hanya Yanigihara has had with the book;

that I would never be able to create something so moving as director Ivo Van Hove did with this play.

I left the play more aware than ever of my smallness - of how ‘little’ my own life really was.

Setting goals, meeting goals and missing them altogether

I sat with my littleness for days, mulling over all the decisions in my life that have brought me to where I am now, and how I could have done it differently so that I would be more like James Norton (or Hanya Yanigihara, or Rami Malek, or Carole King, or Lang Lang - or any of the hundreds of people whose lives I have compared my own ‘little’ one to).

But as I took a sad little audit of what I’ve accomplished so far in my 40 years, I came up against another surprising, confronting thought:

that the things I’ve done could, objectively, be the very goals and aspirations of someone else;

that I could be that James Norton for someone else - not least for the younger version of me, 10, 20, 30 years ago.

As a teenager, riddled with body insecurities and an eating disordered, I dreamt of working in fashion magazines, being up close and personal with all those beautiful, glamorous things.

I finally got there, writing for one of the world’s largest fashion magazine brands. But while I was there, I felt only frustration, dissastisfaction, a resounding “is this it?!” niggle that trailed me every day I went to work.

I got to work up close with luxury fashion, beautiful people; I got to write about serious issues that truly mattered to me; I got to attend champagne lunches in the name of work; and I got to do all the fun things you imagine girls in glossies get to do.

I hadn’t just hit my goal - I was living it.

And yet.

All I could think of was, “This work doesn’t make any real difference to the world. If only I did something less frivolous, more meaningful. If only I was like those brilliant, insightful people who did deep thoughtful research that would really get into the heart of these issues that I’m only scraping the surface of.”

Those thoughts reignited a childhood dream to do a PhD - something I’d fantasised about doing since I was a teenager (also born out of the insecurity that I wasn’t clever enough, not as capable and clever as the peers in my very competitive school).

Now that would be the dream: to get to return to education, to spend my days reading, to get up close and personal with an issue that mattered so much to me and study it in a more formal, profound way.

So I did it - I applied and got accepted into my first choice programme, working with the most wonderful supervisor, alongside a gorgeous community of other researchers, in the most supportive department.

Every day I got fill my days with reading and books and iconic articles by visionary authors and activists; I got to design a research project all my own to explore something so dear to my heart; I got to make like-minded friends and have the kind of challenging, stimulating, enlightening, sparky conversations I’d longed for for years.

I’d hit another goal and was living right in the juiciest heart of it.

And yet.

Several years on, all I could think of was, “But here I am stuck in an ivory tower making absolutely no difference to anybody. Who cares about this one thesis that nobody is going to read? Who cares how ‘robust’ your theoretical framework is when it has no bearing on the actual lives of actual people?

“If only I could be doing something that really makes a difference. If only I was like Hanya Yanigihara, tearing up the world with her beautiful stories; or Rami Malek bringing such life to such brilliant characters that will forever change the way we think about our worlds; or James Norton…”

And so it goes, on and on and on.

You see the pattern, right?

The moment I realised I would never reach any of my goals

Wherever I am - whether that’s just outside a goal, or at the very core of each sparky, wholesome aspiration - I never actually feel like I’m there.

The goal moves further away, or it shapeshifts into something else. The grass there takes on a shade of green that most definitely looks a whole different shade than it does here.

Throughout my life, whatever I’ve been doing, I’ve also entertained various grand longings for a life/vocation as a musician in an orchestra; a yoga teacher; a farmer; a writer on a hit TV series; a hermit living off-grid in a tiny cabin in the woods… the ‘thing’ changes every few weeks, or according to whatever I happen to be watching/reading/listening to at the time.

So there I was last year, sulkily comparing my small, dull, unremarkable life to James Norton’s big, bright, star-studded one, and trying to unravel all the threads that have led me to where I am right now.

I had started out wanting to do that thing of pointing an accusatory finger at past-me: “You see, you never make the right decisions. You always play too small. You don’t have the right goals; and you don’t work hard enough for the ones you do have.”

I was (begrudgingly) surprised to notice, instead, the quiet nudge that said: “But you have met - and surpassed - your goals. You just never noticed it because you were already looking elsewhere, to the next goal, and the next, and the one that’s moved another 100 feet away.”

It went on: “If you keep this up, you’ll never meet any of your goals.”

There it was: the moment I realised I would never reach any of my goals

not because I wouldn’t actually meet them but because the goal kept morphing into something else. And that something else would always, always be something that I was not or did not have.

We’re always told that it’s good to dream bigger, not to get complacent. It’s a good thing that goals evolve and expand to take on our own growing, evolving, expanding selves.

But that wasn’t what I was doing. I hadn’t been stretching my goals, or upgrading them. I’d been switching them out altogether - and then wondering why I could never ‘get there’.

I was always putting myself on the outside of someone else’s life, someone else’s achievements, and then feeling bad for not being that person or having their achievements - but of course that’s not even possible. If a goal is, ultimately, about being inside the imagined life of someone else, we will literally never be able to meet that goal.

I know I still do this. And I’ll probably continue to find myself on those slippery slopes of comparison and feeling like I never match up.

But also, just hearing that truth in my head - “if you keep this up, you’ll never meet any your goals” - was the beginnings of interrupting that awful cycle.

It was so freeing to know that ‘not meeting any of my goals’ had nothing to do with me or my capacities, really, but everything to do with how I was (unrealistically, impractically) shaping those goals in the first place.

It was also realising that I never let myself rest within any goal for long enough to recognise and enjoy it.

Meeting yourself when you meet your goals

Perhaps, after all, it has never been about me not meeting my goals; but everything about me not meeting myself whenever I actually got there.

It’s about sitting with each moment for long enough to acknowledge what we have done; to articulate to ourselves how we have hit those goals and how we are living right inside that dream right now; to recognise that the ‘me’ from several years ago who set that goal in the first place would be in awe of the life we are inside right now - and celebrating the heck out of all of this.

And then, from that space of knowing accomplishment and celebration - we can craft our next goal. That will then mean we’re really expanding, growing, uplevelling from a place that is already goal-accomplished and full; rather than one that is constantly goal-distant and deficient.

James Norton’s star is still on the rise. He’s getting better and better at his craft. He’s going places.

But while that was what I was using as a stick to beat myself up with, I think now that his deep down goals (whatever they might be - none of us will ever really know) and successes are happening in this corner of the world and actually have no bearing on mine.

In the meantime, in my own corner of the world, my star is also still on the rise. And this time, instead of constantly changing the direction of that star, I’m going to set my course and let myself enjoy that ride.