How to play in a ground w/o goal post?

On a Radhasaptami night, due to the lack of the sun rays at night, my mind seemed to act weird, thus writing these thoughts. I even asked my dad a while back about my dilemma, which was seeded by him 36 years back by naming me Goutham, who removed all the goal posts (read desires).

As I chant Nirvana Satakam every day, which says I have no mother/father/teacher/friend/Veda/yagna, there is one and only eternal soul which is pure bliss, I started to delineate myself from everything around me, including my own family members. During the family crisis and issues, pain to the closest family member or the biggest fights with the nearest people caused me distress. So, I had to remind myself and digest Nirvana Satakam concept a lot more often to relieve the emotional pain to thus disassociate me from not feeling associated with any of my close family members.

Similar to the family connections, I have also disassociated with the objects and goals around me. Whether it is a fancy car, luxurious house, exotic vacation trip or a fancy household item. Causing me not to chase any of my materialistic desires. Thus removing the goalpost in my life.

During this confusion, I was thinking about my past of why I had such a dilemma before or if it was due to the Nirvana Satakam effect. Then I realized, there has always been a strong force of desire that kept me moving, whether towards happiness or sadness, but I had a goalpost and I moving towards it, with a few goals and misses.

For example, in my childhood, my dad had always wanted me to get admitted into IIT, so from the age of 13, I had the goal of studying for IIT or getting admissions couldncouldstitution that can ease my path to IIT. With that thought, I spent 5 years (13 to 17 years) working hard for IIT but ended up in NIT. Then suddenly I felt like life goals are achieved and just have to relax in life. That's when life hit me through my batchmates who made me realize how backward I was in non-educational activities like sports, putting across point, persuasion, event management etc. I had always got a goal to lear many and improve in those areas. But I had much more gaps to fill which I felt needed then. So, there was a clear-cut goal.

Similarly, the adrenaline rush to impress a girl and get a chance t date has always been,en a goal for all boys including me. That goal also pushed me in the long run.

After graduation, I got into the dream company in a core sector. Then again my lifetime goal was achieved. Again I felt how terrible I was with people management and playing politics was needed at that point in time. I was busy learning and understanding the missing puzzles. 

Again, it is the fever of higher education of MBA, I tried for IIM but got into XIM. Another goal to run; then again a job had its own goals to fulfil. Then the fever of onsite, for which I slogged like an ass but the visa interviewer didn't like my face or tone or shirt and rejected me twice with 1 min interview. There was a definite goal, and I was busy chasing it; it could be successful or failure, but I was on the run.

10 years post that, I am in a decent position in life with an understanding wife, a smart kid and a fair job with a handsome salary. What happened in these 10 years has changed my thought process. Studying books about the mind, how it works, and its evolution made me think about myself from an outsider's perspective. My understanding is that nature has set up every animal in the world for nature's benefit and nature's principle which is 'life should go on'. Thus, every animal does activities to abide by this rule of continuing life by surviving, thriving and replicating. The same applies to human beings and me. From the external perspective, somehow, I don't want to be part of this whole cycle. If at all I go by this, another rule created by certain kinds of people kick in, that is Capitalists. They have a rule of 'create an artificial desire for people so that they can buy more and get them more profits'. All the activities around me, like buying a fancy car, wearing branded clothes, and going to exotic locations are all cogs in the capitalistic gearbox. Again, I don't want to be part of this vicious circle.

Now, by coming out of the vicious capitalistic circle, what am I left with? What should be my new goal in mid-life? The questions that haunt me every day and also every 30+ year corporate employee. Because it is the age group in life where we suddenly land in a position without a goalpost. Adding to that, is the spiritual angle of disassociation from materialist things.

On the whole, the spiritual angle of disassociation from goals, and awareness of the vicious capitalistic circle want you to come out of the loop, and the situation of the mid-30s without any goal increases the impact on the mind multi-fold, causing panic attacks of what next.

People who didn't go through this experience will certainly feel this experience crazy and will surely write off saying foolishness. But, the actual person who experienced this can really understand the pain. Even I could compare my current state with the past. The desires which caused happiness or sadness in the past look like a luxury now. To draw an analogy, desire is like the charged battery, which creates the difference in potential to run the electrons, thus lighting up the bulb or rotating the fan. The desire charges up people to run. So, the desire can lead a person to be happy to sad where mostly it will be sadness. That's why spirituality asks to kill desires to be blissful. Which means, we are indirectly killing the desire or urge to do something in life. 

I dont want to leave the reader a lot of questions and confusion, rather want to leave with certain tips to handle which is also a takeway for me. 

1. Human is a social animal, so always chose people of your interest to discuss and share thoughts. Self analysis works but it takes longer and painful step. Doesnt work for all to solve alone.

2. Out of all the desires, the biggest and toughest to suppress is the desire to get good name. When you can't kill it, nothing wrong in fullfilling it too

3. Having no goal is not possible, definitely everyone tend to work towards a goal. Materialistic people look for materialistic goals and spiritual people look for spiritual goals of nirvana, meeting god etc. So, try to chose a meaningful goal in life

4. Try to read old scriptures to understand what people have already researched on the topic of idle mind or goalless state. You can build analysis on top of it. I am going to target to complete Bhagavad Gita this year.