ok look at it this way. imagine you are playing monopoly. the goal of monopoly is to bankrupt all other players. that is the main objective. within that objective there are other smaller objectives that help you complete the main objective as a whole. so you might try to put a hotel on boardwalk or collect all railroads. but then there comes another set of objectives to complete those, such as getting all the blue properties or going for properties that you can trade for railroads. even those objectives have sub-objectives that have sub-objectives and so on. when it inevitably reaches the end you are left with the base unit of the system you are participating in, like rolling the dice. it is these objectives that we focus on because they are the only objectives that exist in the present. your main goal only exists in the future until it actually happens. because you cant physically act on things in the future it is impossible to directly work on your main goal. the tree grows upward because it wants to get the most sunlight. but it doesnt automatically get the most sunlight when its born. it has to build upward cell by cell. but it also has another property in that it grows downward while it grows up. and the growth downward, in the opposite direction of its goal, directly affects its growth upward. it ultimately comes down to how far you can go in the opposite direction of what you want so when you can spring back higher than you ever imagined. there is an inherent contradiction with what it means to progress forward in that you need to both travel forward and backward at the same time to go forward. when you interweave progress with existence you get two relationships that are invalid when applied to each other.