Spending your time obsessively achieving only your goals makes you lose the meaning of life

I had life ahead of me, time was nothing, an abstract entity that I watched on my watch to mark my frenetic existence made up of commitments, opportunities and goals.

After school I was ready to measure myself, before others, and what better occasion could there be than entering the world of work.

I immediately became acquainted with the cultural hierarchy, the snobbery of labels and the long line of professional steps in front of me that attracted me, like bees to honey. I had subconsciously decided that there was nothing that could distract me from pursuing that ascent, a ladder built more in my mind than in real life.

Elbowing, pushing, using all my emotional resources, I dedicated a part of my early years as a worker to starting to walk my own path, climbing up different ladders in based on the business opportunities I was relentlessly looking for.

Then the commitment of my days dedicated to work was no longer sufficient to continue climbing the steps, and I soon realized that I had to get a degree to being able to take a leap forward which at that moment was precluded to me.

So I became a working student, working by day and studying by night, consuming five years of my life between business and studying, banishing my love life to an ephemeral and fragile existence, made up of postponed occasions, hurried acquaintances and temporary consumption.

I reached my degree, without realizing that time was passing and that my isolation had increased, closed in on myself, reaching out towards the search for a new scale to go back. I looked back but only saw what interested me, trying to focus on the gap I had put between my previous life and the one I could live now.

My partner on the threshold of 30 began talking about the family, about the pleasure it would give us to have children, planning and a normal life, made up of affection and sharing, to finally build something together.

Yes, he often underlined the word together, because we had very few projects in common, even in bed things didn't go so well, because I didn't want to stop the brain, I could not let go, always busy thinking what to do more intelligent and constructive in the company than my colleagues.

Time passed and in the face of his precise requests about what I wanted to do when I grew up, each time an ever-growing furrow opened up between us, of solitudes as a couple, of different interests and faded memories of our union.

The natural time to have children also passed and, in the end, he too passed, after prompting him to seek another path for his life, given that mine was increasingly busy achieving goals that only I could see.

He walked away, looking back more than once, but I wasn't looking at him anymore, actually hadn't looked at him for quite a few years, so I didn't catch his last gesture of truce.

One day, life presents me with the death of my mother, premature, sudden, for which I was not prepared and, for the first time, I did not have the usual prompt response, the usual efficiency of a manager who solves everything, because on this occasion, nothing could be resolved anymore.

The loss of such a direct affection has opened up a sense of unease in me, a constant reminder of why I had neglected it, with fleeting visits, with the cell phone always in hand during my meetings at her home, always ready to answer a few work emails, as if this nagging sense of commitment made me think that I could appear to her as someone who has arrived, accomplished and therefore could be proud of me.

How many appointments missed, how many birthdays missed, how many promises made and not fulfilled have crowned our relationship, how many times have I told her: now I don't have time, tomorrow, maybe.

A few years after its loss, 55 years later, in my empty house, with the signs of a descending working parable, I began, slowly and without wanting to looking back, scrolling through my life, looking for the pride of what I had done and what I could represent for all the people I had met, directed and, perhaps a little shaped to admire me.

I only found sadness, regret, loneliness and missed opportunities, what I had been running for all my life did not have the value I would have expected, with every mountain climbed I realized, late, that there were others, and then others, until you fell exhausted from fatigue.

Nobody picks you up, nobody helps you, others stronger than you overtake you, they trample you and you fall disastrously to the ground, in the storm of the times, consumed by steep walls of life. There is no possibility of going down to the base camp to refresh yourself, to regain strength, to go back to fighting, because the descent is more arduous than the climb and you now lack the energy to walk.

I stay alone, lying on the frozen snow, with others claiming my climbed steps, laughing satisfied as I close my eyes and abandon myself to oblivion.

Automatic translation. We apologize for any inaccuracies. Original article in Italian.