How do we reach completion?

Are you waiting to get to that point in life where things are just the way you want them? It's a tempting mirage to say 'I'll be happy when I get to x' - a new job, enough money, a nice house, a family, and so on. Are we happy when we live with these kind of goals? What if we don't reach 'point x'? Are we flexible? Perhaps we think of ourselves as a project we need to complete - I need to sort out my body, my mind, my lifestyle, my health, the way I am.

Interestingly, thinking about these things already says something about the way we are. Reaching a particular point of completion (car, house, retirement) usually does not deliver us from who we are - we usually tack on another goal after completing the last one. Can we see this?

There is a trick of perspective here. We need to achieve things but they should not become who we are. I made that mistake and it takes a lot of unpicking. Our worth is somewhere beyond this dynamic. Being chronically ill throws a fresh perspective on the question of completion because it turns out that we can never recover from the illness; we can never reach our goal of being healthy - it does not compute. There is no answer anymore. We are in a state of constant incompleteness. So, there seems little point in waiting until we get point 'x' because it will not happen. We are where we are going to be every day.

Is this a problem or an opportunity? Or is it both? Or is it neither? What is illness anyway?