You ever had one of those moments when you’re very comfortable where you are? When you are so wonderfully resplendent in your relative I’ve-made-it-ish-ness that you think nothing can slow your roll?
And then something happens, a thought, a rebuke or just a passing comment… and your world is flipped upside down? And then you realize that what you thought you had achieved was so insipid, so unbelievably vapid that the very realization left you numb for days? Because, gotta face the truth, you are not where you should be or where people think you should be?
I had a moment like that last year. And it changed my life, for all of two days. Only two, you say? Yes. Because, I got back to thinking to myself (quite naturally, of course) … “When I say ‘I’ve made it!’, what exactly does that mean?”
What does making it mean?
Take a moment.
Sure. Take another.
I realized that for me, it is the journey that’s important. It is the doing that drives me. The journey is making it.
Fine, I have big evil overlord global domination dreams, as witnessed by the magnificently redundant muahahaha-status-updates on Facebook, but those dreams are an end. What do I do with the journey to the end? Stand around moping about how my death-shrink-warp-ray-thing is not working? Curse the world, Mojo Jojo style and lock myself in, curled in a corner feeling sorry for my pathetic failure self?
No. Hang on a sec, flip the coin.
Shouldn’t each day be filled with meaning, with purpose, with a gradual sense of achievement towards that end? Shouldn’t every failure be a step closer to success by elimination? And shouldn’t every success, on its wonderful own, be a moment of sheer happiness, even if it is just a moment? Isn’t knowledge by its very nature a successive collection of information about things that work and many more things that don’t? And wasn’t that knowledge achieved through a process, a journey, and not just arrived at with instantaneous pomp and ceremony?
And just to mess you up some; does the desire for success ever stop? When you’ve hit the big time, when you’re playing with the big boys, will you stop trying to make it, because (you think and fervently believe) you’ve made it?
No. I don’t think so.
Because there is always a higher level to aspire to. There is always something bigger out there, glinting wickedly and whispering lustily, goading you, donkey and carrot style, until before you know it, there’s a hearse and some strangers are lowering you six feet under.
And sadly, today’s I’ve-made-it-ma, top-of-the-world! moment becomes tomorrow’s fork in the road, and a self-inflicted perpetuation of the making it journey, and guess what? The bloody road still goes on.
Think about it; this life we’re on, however meaningless the quest seems, is a journey, and this success you boast so much about, is simply a detour.
I want to change the world, but I want to be happy doing it, even if that joy is painful, and even if that happiness is filled with the bitterness of failure. I want to enjoy every single passing moment doing it. I’m going to change the world, and it doesn’t matter if I’m cooped up in an office with only a glowing monitor for company, pulling out my hair, or if I’m screaming for dear life at the end of a bungee cord.
Who’s with me?
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Rogue FM: Rascal Flatts – Feels Like Today
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Offtopic:
“Any so-called material thing that you want is merely a symbol: you want it not for itself, but because it will content your spirit for the moment.”
- Mark Twain
“You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.”
- Henry David Thoreau
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