A good friend of mine repeatedly tells me, with regard to my general lack of action that "If you really want something, you'll go and get it."
It's a nice idea. If I really want it I'll go and get it, so if I haven't gone after it with everything then I must not really want... It's a comforting thought and serves to justify a lot but at the end of the day I don't know how I really feel about it because it means that there are a lot of things in my life that I guess I never really wanted.
If I really want it, I'd go get it. I wish this were true. I wish I could say about all the things I never got that I never really wanted them but unfortunately I don't think it's the case. I wish I was that sort of person who went after what they wanted, tooth and nail. That if I didn't get it I could at least say I tried my all to get it and it just wasn't meant to be but ultimately when I look back over my life, there are plenty of things I know I could have put more effort into, plenty of things I could have tried harder to get but didn't, so to say I didn't get them because I didn't really want them seems like the biggest cop out possible. I did want them. Hell there are a lot of instances where I still want them and yet what am I doing about them? Nothing!
Here I am met by another statement made to be by someone else very close to me. When I was a teenager one of my best friends (and the girl I was madly in love with) turned to me one day and told me that one of my big problems was that I lacked passion...
That's got to sting right when the girl you're in love with tells you, you lack passion.
Anyway, it stuck with me. It wasn't just who said it to me that caused it to stick but I've always been slightly haunted by the fear that it was true and my general lack of action seems to validate that fear. If I really want something, I'll go and get it but what if I don't know how to really want something because I am passionless? What if I don't know how to have that drive and passion to go after the things I want with all my heart?
I've managed to coast through most of my life on the bare minimum of effort. That is not to say I've never accomplished anything or that I haven't pursued goals in my life, I've just found that even in the pursuit of those goals I've been able to get by with a lot less effort than I probably should admit. I'm a smart guy, I was able to get through school and even my many years of college with a modicum of success but very little effort. The downside to that is that I knew I could have done so much better with a just a little more effort but I always seem to do just enough. I have enough confidence in my own abilities that I could do well in any job I might have to do and up until recently I had been quite lucky with my employment opportunities but then again I am faced with the question of whether or not my career path would have been more secure had I excelled at work rather than just doing well?
I know this is a long one, so I'll just finish with this school story that I think sums up my approach to life quite well: When I was in school at about the age of 16 we were made take a serious of aptitude tests, which we were informed would let us know where our strengths and weakness lay and thus show us what potential careers we would be best suited for. I didn't like this. Why should I listen to what a test said I should do? Surely if I wanted to do something I should just go for it (There has to be some truth to the idea of going after the things you want).
Anyway, I began begrudgingly taking the first test. I was sitting next to the window slowly going through the test and at some point for some reason I held the paper up and noticed as the light shone through the multiple choice sheet that one of the circles on each question was a little darker than the rest. So I checked off the answers and lo and behold the correct answer for each question was a marked by a darker circle. So that's how I did the test. I made sure I got a few wrong on purpose so as not to draw attention and when I was called in to talk to the guidance counsellor about my results she raved about how I had scored so well and could do pretty much anything I wanted. I walked out and laughed but at the end of the day all I had discovered was that I was good at finding the easiest way possible at getting through something that had to be done. This was the height of coasting, these tests didn't really matter and I could have just done them and probably done quite well anyway but I had found the way the get through them that required the least effort, would bring about the best result and would mean I didn't have to deal with anyone analysing or talking over my results with me.
So if you really want something, you'll go and get it but what happens when you lack passion and don't know how to want something at that level? What happens when you are so used to coasting through life that you don't know what to do any more, when you can't see a possible way of coasting, when you can't hold life up to the light to see the correct answers? What am I supposed to do now? There are things I really want but I don't think I know how to go get them...
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