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Lesson 9

Goals in life

What do you want the most? What is it that you want in your life the
most? If you have to choose between wealth, health, time or satisfaction,

what would you choose? In fact, these questions are ageless, and since
time immemorial, philosophers have been looking for the answer. Socrates

said, “It’s better to be an unsatisfied philosopher than to be a satisfied pig.”

By this, he implies that spiritual satisfaction is better than material wealth.
In contrast, the hedonists seek the avoidance of pain and the pursuit of

pleasure. Since life is short, carnal satisfaction is the goal of life. Life is
short; let’s eat, drink and be happy for tomorrow’s death. As time passed,

the question is still being asked and the answers are still pretty much the same-and contradictory.

For many people, they want a fat bank account, a cool car, the time and the means to travel the world. For

others, they just want to be happy, regardless of being rich or poor. They say, “A rich man who is dissatisfied is
always poor, and a poor man who is satisfied is always rich.” But what SHOULD be our goal in life? These days

where realism and pragmatism seemed to have become the norm, many people desire material wealth as the
prerequisite for happiness. Many females gauge a man’s desirability as a spouse with his financial status. Men

in turn evaluate women on their looks, but neither wealth nor beauty is what the older people seek; they desire
health and time. Nevertheless, the paradox of life is that we can’t have it all. A friend of mine said, “When you

are young, you have health and time but no money. In middle age, you have money and health but no time.
And when you are old, you have wealth and time but no health.” Without a doubt, it’s so true!

Comprehension

1. What do spiritual satisfaction and a satisfied pig imply in this paragraph?
2. How do men and women evaluate one another these days?

Questions

1. What are your goals in your life?
2. What kind of carnal satisfaction do you pursue?
3. Do you think having goals in people’s life is important?

Vocabulary & Expressions

immemorial : far longer than people can remember
hedonist : someone who believes that pleasure is the most important thing in life
carnal : a word meaning connected with the body or sex
pragmatism : a way of dealing with problems in a sensible, practical way instead of following a
set of ideas
prerequisite : a requirement needed so that a person can be allowed to do something or which
must exist before something else can happen
gauge : a standard measure of weight, size, etc. to which objects can be compared

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