I'm Alper, a computer science student in Frankfurt am Main, building AI-assisted backend products, but actually those are just a small part of who I am or who I aspire to be. Then the real question is: who am I? Even though philosophers (and sometimes myself) have wondered about this question for centuries, I can start with a simple phrase: "goal-oriented", which is nothing more than a buzzword unless I help you to see it from my perspective.

Parenting is the one example that clearly depicts this: giving your time and your effort over and over again to see your child be better. What this might lead to is a question: can parents or anyone have only a single top-level goal, the well-being of their children? That's the one that I am not sure about, but I have a couple of ideas regarding that.

We humans are limited by a single constraint in every action we take: TIME. Sooner or later, time passes, and we do as well. I don't want to go deep into this right now, but in my opinion, without proper time-management skills and discipline, it is hard to fully commit to a single top-level goal, not even multiple.

Duckworth uses these words to describe top-level goals:

"The top-level goal is not a means to any other end. It is, instead, an end in itself. Some psychologists like to call this an 'ultimate concern.' Myself, I think of this top-level goal as a compass that gives direction and meaning to all the goals below it."

That last sentence gives top-level goals a clear understanding. It is what we live for and what we shape our other goals and plans for. Basically, what we shape our whole life after.

I don't want to give a definite answer to the question above; I'll leave it like that. Though what I want to say is that we, as humans, change. That is a fact, and one we should accept about ourselves and everyone else. Goals are especially bound to change.

We continuously interact with the world, gain new interests and hobbies, meet new people, and travel to new places. All of these experiences continuously shape and change us as people, while possibly altering our projections and goals about our future.

What matters in these circumstances is clinging to ourselves and not letting circumstances change us more than we want. Clinging to a goal, not one shaped and affected by other ulterior motives or external sources, but rather something that comes from within, something that you feel you can't live without, will certainly help us to remember exactly who we are and how we can stay true to ourselves.

In the end, who I am is much more than this, or maybe less, but goal-oriented is a phrase that I can use to describe myself.

PS: Grit is a perfect book to read if anything intrigued you above. It is a very well-written book that I easily put in my top 3.