Hopes v Goals

Are hopes different from goals? Is daydreaming about things the same as hoping for those things? I think I mostly daydream about recognition and isn’t recognition, in the end, attention? Perhaps attention with merit? As a kid I probably hoped for athletic recognition but when that was thwarted by a tardy onset of puberty my hopes went backstage while goals took their call. I went on to college as an economically disadvantaged first generation college student. I didn’t hope for anything because I was too busy studying and reading in order to achieve my goal of graduating and being learn-ed. Off to graduate school on an academic scholarship where hopes, once again peeked out from behind the stage and whispered for goals to come on back, something about free drinks backstage probably. Hopes of being a college professor in philosophy remained just that because I wasn’t working to achieve goals. I was too busy filling one hand with hope and the other with fun to put in the work required. Like my dad used to say, “Put wishes in one hand and shit in the other and see which one fills up faster.”  So while my hopes were ultimately not met due to my actions, my goals were indeed achieved. I learned. A ton. I learned about my academic philosophy abilities and about my will power, and about my integrity or lack thereof, and about heartache, and about my personal resilience. I would go on to another graduate program and keep learning about these things and with more depth and substance as it relates to my direction in life.