Yes, I think in the long run having goals is necessary for a fulfilling life.

But I don't think your goals need to be static. My teenager goals are not my young adult goals are not my grown-up goals...

It's important not to let them become your "white whales" that drive you insane.

It's important to have some goals you never reach. I can't find the origin of the quote right now, but a famous pianist once said "If I had another life to live, I might begin to learn something about the piano." I think that's a great sentiment. It sounds a bit sad, the futility of life and striving for greatness and all that. But I take it as inspiration--you're never done learning, there's always more to discover and marvel at, you can never exhaust the wonders of this world, or your own potential.

Depends:

Well, that was unexpectedly enjoyable and good.

When I started college in 1964 I had a sort of 5 year plan: finish college, get a job. I did that. I did it a couple of times. Many years later, after some good jobs, some bad jobs, good apartments, bad apartments, mostly good people (a couple of alcoholics I could have lived without), lots of boring stuff, lots of interesting stuff, I hung it up and retired early. That or shoot myself.

Life happened, as it will, and after a stretch of sickness and death, I found myself living alone again after 32 years. It took a year or two to get over that. Then I found a plan. I would go back to the beginning of my college years and do the kind of reading now that I wish I had done back then. And so I have been beefing up the content of my bachelor degree.

It's a worthwhile goal at this stage in life. Maybe it can't happen until this stage. To no great end, all of this, other than to understand the world better, understand myself better. And it's working.

But what makes the micro and macro actualizable goals within one's life possible as such? It seems to me like the numerous actualizable goals we have in life might always refer back to, and make sense on the basis of, a non-actualizable existential understanding one has of oneself (e.g. Husband, Father, Wife, Bourgeois, Proletariat, etc.).The latter, which is not meant here merely as an actualizable social status, but rather as a non-actualizable existential self-understanding, might very necessarily be the condition of possibility of the former actualizable goals. I could go into more detail if pressed...

I think it is interesting to consider the possibility that one's social status (as say a Mother for example) might not necessarily align with that person's existential understanding of themselves. I think this point nicely shows the difference between the actual and the existential levels of analysis. She has the social status of Mother, but her world is not significant for-the-sake-of being a Mother

I have no goals. I read somewhere that a goal=prey and so, naturally, the prey and goal flee in the opposite direction. I think there's a grain of truth in such a worldview.

This contrasts with facts though. Everyone has an objective or goal and their whole being is directed towards acheiving it.

I find that interesting because all one needs to do is look up at the stars, try to comprehend the vast scale of the universe itself, to rethink on the value of any human goal/objective.

Of course one needn't be that philosophical and return to Earth, country, community and family to see how much can be achieved at that level.

It's perspective I guess and there's no good reason to prefer one over the other.

I have no goals. — TheMadFool

No surprise there.

Is it necessary to have a 'goal' in life? — krishnamurti

Only if action is a possibility (i.e., there are no goals in death).