I enjoy Einstein’s remarkable way of looking at the world. We do need goals and they are the fuel that moves us ahead, but without people close to us we cannot accomplish those goals.
“If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things.”
—Albert Einstein
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Enjoy today.
Achieve today.
Tomorrow is promised to no one!
Teacher as Transformer 
Happiness is tied in to a sense of achieving purpose, goals being connected to purpose.
And I imagine purpose is related to the people in one’s life. This re-blog got a lot of commentary.
With all due respect to Mr. Einstein, I feel that happiness is a state of mind, regardless of whether or not it is tied to people, places, or even goals. I understand where he’s coming from; I just feel that happiness is a state of being whose achievement is not dependent on any goal, person, place, or thing.
Being in this moment is an essential part of happiness or achieving happiness. Accepting that emotions, like anything else are fleeting, is critical to our happiness. I suspect Einstein would have agreed with you Holly.
🙂
I agree with Einstein, with you, Ivon, and with Holly as well – I think we all mean the same, just look from different perspectives and name it differently. For me, the Einstein’s ‘goal’, your ‘supporting environment’ and Holy’s ‘happiness’ means just the same – means Love, following Love beyond the rest. I agree with Holly that happiness doesn’t depend on any circumstances, it depends on the state of Love in ourselves. I agree with you, Ivon, that people we share our physical and emotional intimacy with are the best helpers, the God’s instruments to support us with uncovering Love in ourselves. And I agree with Einstein that following anything else than our main goal – our truth – makes us unhappy, for denying our feelings to keep the person or things TO stay happy, we just lose truth, Love and happiness. By interesting coincidence (I don’t believe in coincidences :)), this is the subject of the text I just wrote and I’m going to post tomorrow…
I often wonder if an objective Einstein had was to make us think deeper and come to the types of conclusions you and Holly have with your commentary.
I can see you doubt in it 🙂 Everyone speaks the truth from the level they are and sure we can’t know how far Einstein went in his self-growing, however I am convinced the author of the sentence “The only real valuable thing is intuition” had to go really far. Either way we can’t know – maybe he told more than we can perceive, maybe our own experience makes us see what was not meant. But, you know, reading his other quotes makes me believe we would reach each other on this field 😀
Just for example, there are his words:
“A human being is a part of a whole, called by us _universe_, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest… a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
Thank you for a wonderful early morning comment. I love exploring and looking for questions rather than answers. I have a particular connection to Einstein that makes him interesting to me. In my classroom, I have a poster with his quote about imagination being better than knowledge. His name is on the poster, but, despite this, I was asked by a student who he was. I responded by saying my father. Another student looked at me a said no way. I pointed out he and I share many things: wild hair, facial foliage, and eccentric behaviour. Another student did finally point out Einstein’s name on the poster, but several years later students always clarify if it is my real dad or Einstein we are talking about.
Great story 😀
Thank you
one of my favorite quotes thanks do I understand this quote
I find Einstein’s quotes challenge one to think about what he said. Are goals really more important than people? Probably not, but without goals our relationships may not be as deep.
that is exactly why I love this quote it makes us think….we all have different perspectives on what we read and our emotions play a big part on that too. A goal can mean so many things…. for example getting married to your soul mate because you are looking for true love, but if we focus on things or people it would mean in the lines of…marring for money or an idea (people) or chasing a ring (things). So many times we focus on things and people that we do not focus in what we truly desire…like being at peace,happy or in love we chase Ideas not goals, often goals can be beautiful things. thanks for making me think.
What happens if the goal is a thing? .. anyway .. its a very good quote..
The interesting thing about this quote is it created more questions than it provide answers. I wonder if that is what Einstein attended? Thank you Isaac.
I didnt knew that, well everyman has its motifs dont we all?
We each do. Thank you again for stopping by.