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FOR WHOM ADVERSITY IS FUEL
Thursday Mar. 30, 2017
Dealing with life’s adversities – hitting curve balls, fast balls or spitballs out of the park is our hope, but youth fades and reality sets in.
I’ve been thinking lots lately about achievement.
High achievement.
Asking hard questions of interesting achievers – often startled by their answers, I ponder this subject in search of answers I’ve not found yet …
Feeling on top – being on top, that goal many people seek. Lofty. For those who get there, staying there is doubly difficult. For most us who set achievement in some form as our ‘goal’, there is no can/cannot do/do not choice, is there? We either want it badly enough, or we don’t. Pursue it vigorously or not vigorously enough – we swing between these slight differences as if they are widely separated.
I’m not saying every also-ran clutching a participant ribbon in their hands deserves to be lauded – but maybe many of them are far more deserving than we simply ignore them or pass them over in our thoughts because they aren’t first, or second, or last year’s top/champion/winner.
What’s the difference between best and second best?
Between fifth and sixth?
Not much – it’s all high achievement to those who watch, to those who trail – but there is a weird psychology to so much in life, where achievers second-guess their success or who feel there is only one spot worth having, that top spot.
Without doubt every kid who ever hit a ball or tied up a pair of skates has a moment of wondering what it would be like to hold a trophy high to the cheer or enormous crowds.
Every mom or dad who goes off to work has a moment of wondering what it would be like to come home holding a pay-stub high to the cheer or one fan …
Everyone who comes home – with any prize, to no audience at all, to no one at all – wonders what the point of all that could be.
What are we doing?
Who do we do it for?
Really, for who?
Or is that ‘for whom’?
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