Goal? No goals here. The term goal indicates an objective reached by consistency of effort over time. I am not consistent — I change my mind. I am not good at effort — I give up.

I’ve had goals: to run an 18-minute 5K; to pay off my fiance’s engagement ring before our wedding; to lose weight before that same wedding (the actual motivator was not to look good in my tuxedo so much as in my honeymoon swim trunks); to save a large downpayment on our house so that we could keep our monthly payment low.

Now it occurs to me that three of those goals were in partnership with my wife, and it may be no simple coincidence that those are also the three goals that I achieved. The sub-18:00 5K never happened…missed it by about 40 seconds. I suppose that’s a pattern that I can find in other parts of my life too: when I’m working toward a goal with someone else then I can achieve it; when I set a goal for myself I’ll more than likely quit early because no one is holding me accountable. I guess in my case one man cannot change the world unless someone else is there to make sure that he does.

Now so far I’ve just been mulling my ability to set and attain minor goals. But the question asks about a singular GOAL. I.e., the thing that you want to attain by the totality of your life. If your answer is along the lines of material things like, “A big boat,” then you’re a sad, sad person, my friend. The major goal of your life should be more of an accomplishment than an object. “To have raised great children.” “To have stretched the bounds of medical science.” “To have left an example of human determination and potential.”

I’ve never thought of myself as working toward a goal like this. It’s not that I don’t want to do it — it sounds great now that I think about it! — but it’s just never occurred to me before that I should try to steer the larger course of my life. Actually, it’s never occurred to me that I could steer the larger course of my life. Life to me is mostly about reacting to where I find myself now. That sounds pretty sad when just putting it out there like that.

Question Two was better suited to me because it asked about what I hope for or crave. Hoping and craving are much easier concepts to apply to me than goals and effort and consistency. But I’m going to start thinking about my goals now. I do want this life to go somewhere. I don’t want to look back, dying, and wish I had figured this out long ago.

First, because this is my personality that we’re dealing with, let me say that the question is worded atrociously and should be instead: When does life seem not worth living?

Second, answering the question. Life isn’t worth living when I feel like a failure at absolutely everything. When I let the girls watch too much TV and I don’t get any laundry done and I have no idea what I’m serving for dinner (Or worse, when I think I’ll have to serve rice and soy sauce again because I didn’t get to the grocery store for meat or cheese) and there are all those calls I was supposed to make but didn’t and the carpet looks like it should have been vacuumed or else set ablaze two days ago — Then I feel the most depressed. I don’t feel like killing myself because that would be decisive and I’m certainly not decisive. But I do feel like a perfect waste of intricately organized proteins.

But then there is that to feel good about: I’m nutritious!

Now let me try to analyze some of that.

Life is not worth living when I think everything is going to shit; when I think that a better person would not have let everything go to shit; when what I have done is nowhere near the best I could have done or else the best I could do was still short of what was needed.

When does life seem not worth living? When I don’t seem worth living it. When I, through failure, don’t seem worth living it.