Great workouts always inspire me. So does sunshine. These ideas came from both.
I was showering and thinking (to make productive use of my time, I think a lot while doing things that bore me – brushing my teeth, taking a shower, knitting, etc) and recalling a conversation I’d been having about someone who had wasted their life and all their potential (and others who were in the process).
It struck me that people who spend their lives "putting out fires", do so because their life is one giant house of cards. (Yes, I’m mixing metaphors.)
So anything that threatens to burn through their carefully crafted facade must be dealt with, squelched, and the facade must be repaired.
They spend their lives, and all of the energy they could – and should – be spending on maximizing their personal potential, and they spend it all on propping up the facade.
One white lie leads to another leads to another and before you know it, either you have to just fess up, rip the whole thing down, admit it’s not really you and that you’ve been a fraud, and start over clean…or you spend your whole life living a lie and doing everything you can to convince people the lie is true.
Ayn Rand made the bold statement that these people are the most despicable of all, because (I paraphrase) "they want to be loved and respected for values they do not actually possess". So their lives are spent – really, wasted – on keeping the ruse going.
My solution is to build a life that is REAL. No matter how different, unique, unpopular, etc…if it’s productive, if it’s maximizing all that I was given and put on this earth to do, guess what? I can be transparent.
I can be real with people, I can sell them without having to lie. It is possible to be logical and yet gracious. It’s possible to be powerful and yet gentle. It’s possible to respected and yet spontaneously fun.
You know what that leads to? A life where stress – for all intents and purposes of the word – does not exist. There are no "fires" to put out, no concern about the facade burning down. Why?
Because a life that is real, a life that is built around logical, rational values, a life of HONESTY and INTEGRITY (adherence to those values, no matter what)…that’s a life that is SOLID.
Rock solid. And solid rocks do not burn…
Interesting thoughts; have you considered, though, that most of your life may be spent in the PURSUIT of consistently practicing a life of honesty and integrity, rather than ACTUALLY practicing a life on honesty and integrity? I’m not suggesting that you cannot or will not live honestly and with integrity; what I am suggesting, though, is that humans are hopelessly flawed and cannot (regardless of their will or desire) consistently life that way. Your intentions are honorable, though.
Good intentions are worthless – it is only action that counts. And if one is actively acting on their desire to live in a certain way, whether you term it “pursuit” or whether you say it’s “actually” being lived that way, it doesn’t change the facts: action or inaction, in a certain direction.
As for your suggestion that “humans are hopelessly flawed…”, I completely disagree.
I begin with the premise that perfection IS possible, that I CAN choose to do the right thing. Life is nothing more than a million little choices each day. Nothing stops me from making the right choice, other than me choosing to make the wrong choice. It’s all on me. I am responsible for my own actions.
I agree that humans are fallible; however, I refuse to focus on the negative, instead focusing on the positive.
That being, Man is powerful, Man is creative, Man is capable of greatness.
You become what you focus on.