EST. 2014
I always tell myself that once I pass a certain goal post I’ll be good enough. Good enough to be able to say I write or I blog or I can bake. But as I watch the world around me or even as I watch completely fictional series I set those goal posts farther and farther way. At this rate I will never reach those goal posts. I will never be “good enough”. “You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid.” – Franz Kafka I personally am not the top of my class in anything. This is not to be taken as a cry out for sympathy or anything like that. It’s just a fact. This being said, I don’t want that to ever keep me from doing what I love. If I quit doing everything I love just because I know someone who can do it better, I’d be going nowhere. And that thought scares me a whole lot more than failing to be in the 99th percentile 100% of the time. In different areas of our lives we have different standards. Different communities have different standards. What may have been considered as spectacular in one community may be considered mediocre in another. And as time passes these standards can rise or fall.
It’s not fair for any of us to base our achievements solely on the scales given to us, as they are relative. I'm not saying that we should disregard these standards completely or else we could end up overestimating our abilities. We just shouldn't forget to give ourselves credit. I know a lot of really talented people. The school that I consider myself a part of recognises talent in many areas. And of course not everyone can be recognised for their efforts. There are people in the world who are clearly set apart from their peers in their chosen areas. And by saying we can write or do whatever we often put ourselves up to be compared to these people. I don’t think that this is necessarily a bad thing as it helps us see the work we have ahead of us. At least for me, rather than this being an encouragement, I feel like the world is mocking me. As if the entire universe, including God who I know wants the best for me, is against the idea of me “achieving greatness”. I know that this is an irrational thought and that reeks of narcissism, but it is one that constantly crosses my mind. “As long as we live, our self-absorption and our insecurity will walk together, holding hands and swinging them back and forth like two little girls on their way to a pretend playground they can never find. Human nature dictates that most often we will be as insecure as we are self-absorbed. The best possible way to keep from getting sucked into the superficial narcissistic mentality that money, possessions, and sensuality can satisfy and secure us is to deliberately give ourselves to something much greater...[Christ] showed us that giving, rather than getting, is the means to receiving...to find yourself, your true self, you must lose yourself in something larger.” ― Beth Moore, So Long, Insecurity: You've Been A Bad Friend To Us If you work hard to be the best you can be in any given area, but no one recognises that fact, it doesn't change how hard you worked. It’s so easy to base our lives on a scale where we either succeed or fail. It’s so easy to make this scale biased against ourselves. And when we think we've failed, it’s easy to give up. When you think about it from a logical perspective this concept doesn't make much sense. How can we get so upset and discouraged with ourselves when we know we did our best? And how does quitting help this situation? Sometimes I wish that logic would win in my mind, but in times like this, it doesn't. I sit around yelling at God, despite what I know to be true: that I've done my best, and that I am doing my best. Many times the risks I take come from a place where I feel like I have nothing to lose, rather than looking at what I may gain. I go in thinking, “If I fail, I fail.” End of experience. Rather than, “If I fail, I fail. At least now I know how to do _____ better.” “6 This is why I remind you to fan into flames the spiritual gift God gave you when I laid my hands on you. 7 For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline.” - 2 Timothy 1:6-7 (NLT) Sometimes we just have to give our all. Even when our best is not guaranteed and when “failure” seems inevitable. Even when we feel like the world is mocking us, we have to at least try. At least try to achieve greatness and at least try to learn from our disappointments.
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The following is a conversation between Henrietta “Hetty” Lange (Linda Hunt) and Nell Jones (Renée Felice Smith) from the end of “Leipei” (the most recently released episode of NCIS:LA). In this conversation they're talking about how and if Nell will ever achieve the full status of an undercover agent. Hetty: "But you don't want to get there doing it as it's been done?" Nell: "I don't know if I can." Hetty: "So, you'd risk not attaining the goal you hold most dear, because you feel compelled to follow your own path?" Nell: "I'm not big or overwhelmingly athletic. I'm not an amazing sniper. To be honest with you, Hetty, going in undercover scares me. I'm never going to be like the others, and I know that. I can't do the things that they do in the way that they do them, because I have to do them my way, even if that means never making it." Hetty: "Amazing what happened when the Van Winkles made whiskey their way." If you persistently work hard towards a dream, and you can’t seem to get any closer to achieving it, maybe it’s time to let go. But don’t mistake this situation for another. Some dreams and goals just take a lot longer to achieve.
Memorising your multiplication facts is something that is pretty much required to pass upper-level math. It took me three years longer than my little sister to learn my multiplication facts. If it had been up to me, I would have never memorised them, but it wasn't. This is a fairly basic example, but my point is that not everyone achieves things at the same pace. When it comes to personal dreams, chances are no one is offering you help without you asking for it. Chances are no one's forcing you to persistent and to give your all (much like primary school vs. everything else above it). No one’s forcing you to make your goals harder to reach. Chances are no one's forcing you to take a break or showing you what you've accomplished. Nor is anyone forcing you take the baby steps you need. It’s something you have to do on your own. It’s not fair to decide we don't need to ask for help because the people around us don't seem to need it. It's not fair underestimate or overestimate our own capabilities simply because a friend or a sibling is able to work at that pace. “We have to do things our own way, even if it means never making it.” We live in a world where the things and people around us are ever-changing, ever-evolving. It’s easy to feel obsolete when it seems like every minute something new has been produced, something that will make the world “a better place”. It’s easy to forget yourself when you’re constantly having stereotypes and expectations and the world’s ideals thrown at you. When who you thought you were seems irrelevant and boring in the face of a world where things can go from viral to dull within days. Many of us try to keep up with the world around us in some way, but as time passes and the world speeds up this is becoming increasingly harder.
When we focus so much of our time on watching the huge changes going on around us, we often have little time to focus on the change going on within us. We forget that we are also ever-changing and ever-evolving. My point is that it’s easy to get caught up in the world around us to the point where we become strangers to ourselves. We need to take time to understand who we are and what we want out of life. I'm not saying we need to plan our entire lives; I understand not everyone thinks like that. But that just as we monitor our social media and important (or not so) events, we should pay attention to ourselves. It’s so easy to become experts on celebrities who don’t know we exist, yet live a life in which we’re complete mysteries to ourselves. “The thing about the world is that it doesn't have any extra pieces. It's like pi: it contains everything. You remove a single piece, no circle.” – Harold Finch (Michael Emerson - Person of Interest) None of us are obsolete, so we have no reason to act like it. We may not trigger the latest trends, but what we think and how we feel is important. Maybe not to a million fan girls (or boys) across the globe, but it’s important for your general well-being. So, as odd as it sounds, don't forget yourself. When I'm trying to decide what decision to make, I tend to over think and over complicate things. I do this to the point where both decisions seem equally perfect or equally horrible.
I think that when our brains are trying to make decisions they're like whisks whipping cream. If you over whip cream it separates and becomes unusable and disgusting. If we over think things our brains can become messy places. The things we hoped to achieve no longer can be, because we’re so mixed up. But unlike whipped cream we can go back. Back to the place where there’s more black and white than grey. “LSD stands out for learning to slow down.” - Santosh Kalwar If we slow down just enough, we’ll be able to notice the small details. These details can end up being the ones that tip us over to one side over the other. To get yourself to slow down and/or “unthink” things you have to want to. We can’t always simply follow our hearts or else we may end up in limbo. I often times lose my heart-desire to make a decision, but I still have a conscious-desire. I don’t necessarily want to do something, but I want to want to do something. Doing something as small as slowing down and having a thought can be better than rushing through life checking off things as quickly as possible. “Sometimes our stop-doing list needs to be bigger than our to-do list.” - Patti Digh |