We often forget why we do what we do. Most simplistically, it might be said that a person does what they do in order to achieve an outcome they desire. But sometimes we don’t know why we desire an outcome. Sometimes we don’t know what outcome we are aiming for at all. Sometimes, we just do as we do.
From a young age, we are ordered to extrapolate outcomes of actions further and further into the future. Be polite to strangers or you will be hit. You do not want to be hit because being hit hurts. Or maybe you do – in which case I hope you are hit. But be polite to strangers.
Later: work hard in school so you get good grades. You want good grades because you value your image as intelligent or hard-working. Or maybe you just don’t want to be hit. Or maybe you don’t want good grades at all. But you’d damn well better find a reason to. Maybe you don’t care about your image, and maybe you won’t be hit. But maybe, perhaps, conceivably and on reflection, you’ll want to become a physicist someday, and only people with good grades become physicists. So, you want good grades. Congratulations. Now you need to work.
So you work and you work and you work. And you work and you work until you cannot remember why you wanted to work in the first place.
Beware long term goals.