Today I ran into a young writer I used to work with. He was working the registers at Chick-fil-A and lamenting his lost opportunities to write. It pissed me off. In truth I used to be that kid and sometimes still am. Here is a classic case of someone who had the fire to be really successful at something and then met resistance with what he tried to do. He turned around in circles, a dog chasing his own tail and hoping on the next rotation there would be someone there to back him up and make him feel like he could achieve. Instead he found the daily faceslap of life and a harsh existence that all too quickly got away from him.
This is my story too. I’m still working to decode the secret of motivation—of how to keep going in the face of adversity; of how to not quit when it gets hard. When I see that kid I see the person I become when motivation is merely nagging at me, tugging at the hem of my attention while I try to keep focus on making it through another difficult day.
A friend suggested that it is hard to do what you need to do when you’re dealing with personal drama. I agree with her wholeheartedly, but I also think that we actively choose what we are going to do and what we are going to focus on each day. If I can separate from the world for 10 minutes a day, I can separate from the world for 25 minutes a day or 45 or even as much as an hour. The thing is I gotta want to do it more than I want to talk about doing it or think about doing it or plan to do it tomorrow. Furthermore, for me at least, there needs to be people around me who see that effort and recognize its value and there needs to be at least one person in my life who sees me slack off and says, “that isn’t gonna fly.” Sure, in a perfect world that person would be me, but I’ve come to realize that I’ll let myself get away with a lot. I won’t be optimal until I find myself in the optimal situation, but I can at least be functional and this boy, this self-failed writer can be functional as well.
He’s just gotta want to get there more than he wants to ignore the pain of what it takes to get there.
Some Thoughts:
- Maybe I’m not done talking about the Ray Rice thing just yet. Now I had to hunt to find this article. Most searches for Ray Rice or his fiancee result in videos of the attack and articles about the attack and little about her and how she feels about this. Everyone is treating her like a witless victim who needs to get out of the situation. They basically chastise her for staying in the relationship and put on victims and experts to spin the same story. Here is the story being spun: He hit her, he needs to be punished to the fullest extent of the law, he should never be allowed to play football again, and she must be mentally messed up to want to stay with him. Well, I’m not so quick to judge. We pride ourselves as a nation that gives people a second chance, but that isn’t true when it comes to our exemplars of polarizing events is it? Ray Rice has been labeled by everyone I’ve talked to as a villain and not one person is willing to allow him the opportunity to learn from his mistake. Instead they see this as indicative of how the relationship has always been and indicative of his character as a man. We all seem to want to press the delete button on the dude, but what about what she wants? What about the possibility of him learning to be a better man and really understanding–as a society–what happens with that relationship and how such things can be fixed.