I watched an amazing TED talk the other day about achieving your childhood dreams and there are so many things that this man, Randy Pausch, said that empower me. It’s just such a wonderful talk, I’m awestruck by everything that he accomplished and the apparent ease with which he accepts his death. He achieved all of his own dreams and there was one quote, one nugget that inspired me to do the hard things, to not give up on the things I want. He said that brick walls are there to remind us how much we want things. The obstacles aren’t there to shut us down, they exist to deter the people who don’t want it enough. The key to getting what you want isn’t being the luckiest or the wealthiest or even the best qualified, you have to try the hardest.
I saw this kind of determination in my sister when she stopped at nothing trying study abroad in Italy over the summer. She didn’t give up or stop trying when she faced challenges like financing and she eventually got what she wanted, along with all of the bizarre, funny, fantastic stories that one accumulates living in a foreign country for two months. She took day trips to Venice, shopped at the local farmers’ markets, lived in Florence, went to wineries in the countryside for tastings, visited Italian beaches, and even went cliff diving. Because she wanted it badly enough.
Motivation like that is something I really struggle with personally. I often find myself having a hard time living up to my aspirations or potential because I just lose steam. I want that inner drive to be successful and productive but I just slog along, doing the bare minimum. I do have the occasional burst of creative, productive energy but it tends to happen at inopportune times when I’m required to do other tasks or materials aren’t available or whatever and it’s frustrating. I have all these great ideas swirling around and when one bubbles up to the surface I never seem to be close enough to a pen and paper to grab it before it’s gone again. I want to have drive and inspiration on demand, as impossible as I know that is. So where does that leave me? Spinning my figurative tires, mostly. I’m stuck. I want things but I almost feel as though I don’t deserve anything great because I don’t want it enough. It’s like…I’ve been afraid to want something that badly for so long, that now I’ve forgotten how to crave anything. After one too many let downs, I stopped letting myself want anything that I had a possibility of not getting it so now I can’t “dream big”. I need to stop aiming for the easy targets and start jumping off cliffs.
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