Goals

Of course I have the normal yearly goals as 2021 begins: to bench 315, to pray more, to get better at the guitar, to publish a poem. But then there are the goals for the rest of my life, my one wild and precious life, the life I (jointly with God, and jointly with you) create today and every day.

I want to live to be 150. Why not? Healthy habits alone are enough to push life expectancy into the nineties—why not think medical advances over the next century could push it much higher? I want a century of “retirement,” not for golf in Boca Raton, but to see the world change, to read, to write, to see (Deo volente) my great-great-great-grandchildren. There are no guarantees, and the future is never entirely in our hands, but that’s what I want—why settle for anything less?

I want to see Mars—not through a telescope in the sky, but as a visitor, or even perhaps a colonist. We (America, the old America) landed a man on the moon fifty years ago. Why not Mars fifty years hence? “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it.” Why not also Mars? Don’t we need new frontiers?

I want to become a saint—a holy one, not an ancient monk with a nimbus and robe, but someone who has conquered the flesh and filled with the fruits of righteousness (justice): love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance. I have a long way to go, and hopefully a long time to get there. In some respects I’d have to become unrecognizable to my current self. Why not strive for that? Why settle for who I am now?

I want to reverse the slow and ugly death not just of my homeland but of Western civilization, to restore the glory of the brave old world which gave us life and to give birth to a beautiful new world “with antique sinew and with modern art.” I want to make the Church, the Bride of Christ, as radiant as she can be, and purify her of the demon ideologies of Western suicide. I want bison to repopulate the Great Plains, woolly mammoths to repopulate the Arctic, and dinosaurs to repopulate tropical islands (what’s the worst that could happen?). I want to write books, to buy more Bitcoin, to harmonize with my children, to love truly, to end poverty, to leave the doors safely unlocked at night.

I want so very many things, if God should bless me with them. And today, like every day, is the day I either pursue those things or settle for a lesser shadow of a life.

I am tired of small dreams and stunted possibilities. What about you? I (literally) want to shoot for the stars.

Happy New Year.