In a game of football, you win the game when you score more goals than your opponents. At both ends of the approximately 100m long field are goal posts, one pair for each team. The field is divided into equal half, meaning each team gets the same distance or space to chest, head or kick the ball into the net that hangs between the two goalposts. And of course, the goal posts are planted firmly into their positions.
Now, if one team were to shift the goalposts, make the goal mouth smaller, his team would have an unfair advantage. This will never be allowed to happen cos the fans of the opposing team will surely run amok. But in real life, one often changes the goalposts to his advantage (no one will change his goalposts to his disadvantage) because he wants to win, or get his way.
And that's what everyone of us is apt to do, a lot too. Changing goalposts; even when there is already a set of clear guidelines for us to follow. We will find means and ways to circumvent those guidelines, to have what we want. There will be some among us who will retract or retrace because of conscience but somehow, we will always try to change those goalposts. Sometimes, even when it's obvious that the we've 'illegally' shifted the post, we try to make it legitimate via reasons of various paths.
It takes a lot to say no or walk narrower path. It's difficult cos everywhere we turn, we see people with things we desire too. It becomes even harder when our kids feel deprived of the things they see their friends are able to own. And they are not. Resentment, a sense of hopelessness, peer pressure of sorts fester. And so, we change our goalposts, bit by bit. The gray grows. The black and white diminish.
Life gets a surreal feel sometimes, when you think about it that way.
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