Cheers - Where everybody knows your name

I was watching a few minutes of the show, Cheers. It was right at the beginning, people were sitting around talking, listening to some songs and having memories spring up. Some funny things were said, and then the theme song came on. The one about how sometimes you just want to go where everybody knows your name. I've been thinking about my options in life. It just seems like anything a person could possibly imagine wanting to do costs money. If someone wants a better career, it would take more schooling, which is expensive. And more schooling doesn't necessarily ensure a better income. It's only a step, after which more steps must be taken. And those steps will also probably cost money. And this, among a whole bunch of other factors, just makes life problematic. And I just stop to wonder what it is I want out of life. Do I just want to go some place where people know me? Where I can talk to them about drab, everyday crap and feel okay about life for a couple hours? I have too much of an imagination for that, I think. I can't think that the mundane hours of every day are what I live for. But what if my life is only mundane. What if I never experience the adventure there is in life? It strikes me that there are people in the world, many of them, who have settled for the basics of life - food, sleep, work - and they are not HORRIFIED. The thought of living out their whole entire lives without experiencing something amazing does not terrify people, and that I cannot understand. But how do I keep from getting tripped up and stifled by the 'problematic' things of the world. Money issues, relationships, jobs, debts... money issues. Ugh. To think there are people in this world who love money, and live for it. How can they not find it disgusting? Isn't it strange? Isn't it??? So anyway, back to the issue I meant to discuss. What is important in this life! What is it I want? It seems like I know a lot more about what I don't want than about what I do want. I know I don't want to be in my current job in 3 years. I know I don't really want to be single in 5 years. I know I don't want to fail. In life. But what is it I'm trying to accomplish. One of my managers, at a recent employee meeting, claimed that if you didn't have goals, you didn't have a life. Then he proceeded to laud his own goal of making our restaurant number one in the region and among the top five in the country. WOO-HOO!!! I can't wait!! My life will finally be fulfilled!! The guy thinks he has a life because the restaurant he currently happens to work at, he WANTS to be number one? I agree that without goals, a person won't get much of anywhere. But everyone has instinctive goals that cause us all to act, get jobs, support ourselves. We all want to appear self-sufficient. We all want to make some money (because we all need to). Lot's of people want to be loved and to fall in love and all that. All of these are goals, and there's really no getting away from most of them. It's in the execution of the plan toward reaching those goals that we find what we're really made of. That's what determines whether we have a life. Not whether we want to be somewhere, but whether we get somewhere significant or not. I want to write a novel. But I have not yet finished a novel. As far as novel-writing goes, I do not have a life. I want to fall in love. I have not yet fallen in love with a woman who has fallen in love with me. As far as love is concerned, I do not have a life. Even if it's my goal. Even if I work toward achieving said goal. Okay. I'll get off that tirade for a while. I just don't really like a lot of that Goal-setting stuff, because I never end up where I want to be, anyway, and most other people don't either. Instead, they end up at some local bar, glad to have a place where they can go where everyone knows their name. But I don't know if I can or should be content with that. It seems to me that if one lived life extraordinarily, one will have extraordinary experiences. But maybe I should just hurry up and finish reading War and Peace, before that guy's fatalistic depressive perspective pervades all areas of my life. Okay. Time to read.