desire

I am so lucky.  Most days now, I find myself happy in ways I’ve never been before.  I love my quiet life in the country and enjoy my time spent in the city as well.  I have a beautiful home: someone to love, four feline crazy characters, and the most sensitive dog in the world (takes after her mother).  For the first time in my life, I’m not plagued by a car that fails the old “A to B” test.  I’m not going hungry (far from it), money doesn’t seem to be a concern, and for the most part the people I love are happy and healthy.  

I used to pontificate that when people are content, they have no motivation to drive them.  I find myself on the other side of the table now, and I’m not sure I was wrong.  When my life was tragic and going nowhere, I was determined to stay focussed and “make something of myself”.  Now that I’m happy with who I’m becoming, it’s easy to become complacent for spells.  Eventually, though, the desire creeps up inside me and I want more, I want to try harder, I feel like I have something more to offer.  This has happened recently.

A couple of years ago, someone told me I won’t succeed with my music because I “don’t want it enough”.  I don’t think it was fair for her to tell me that based on my father’s cancer diagnosis and my need for some time to help my family.  I think she was wrong and I want no piece of a success that requires failing as a person.

For the record, I did what I needed to do and regret it not at all.  

It’s scary to “want it enough”, you know.  Think about Olympians.  We all hear the Olympian stories...”I’ve been working toward this dream since I was just a child and my mom took me to practice at (insert ungodly hour here) every day and I knew I would get here because I just wanted it so bad and I believed in myself and I never gave up on my dream”  It’s always a different version of the same story, and so we grow up believing that if you want something “enough” and work really hard and always believe in yourself, then you will succeed.  What about the other 6837 kids who went to just as many practices, just as early in the morning, wanted it more than anything, believed in themselves, and then placed 12th and didn’t get to go to the Olympics?  Because those kids certainly do exist.  And when they grow up and it doesn’t work out, they go and get “real” jobs, or they get married and focus their energies on their families, or they teach or coach, or they curl up and die in one of a million different ways.  And so we learn to temper our desire with realism...go out on the limb, but tie yourself to the tree first...so that we are not destroyed when we fall short of the goal, whatever it is.  However, one could argue that it’s this tempered desire that leads to the falling short...”you didn’t want it bad enough.”

And so we are left with the question, is it better to temper our desire and risk mediocrity or dive in with reckless abandon and risk devastation?  Being a sensitive girl, it’s been hard for me to get to a point where I can express my desire completely and freely.  Much safer to be tied to the tree.  Especially now that I’ve been doing this for a few years, people expect results and it gets embarrassing to say, “yep, still plugging away at it” when I can hear them thinking, “Still? When are you going to give it up and grow up?” even if they don’t say it.  I worry about what others think, but only because I’m thinking it myself.

As long as I can remember, I knew I wanted to give something to people from the stage.  For a while, I was too scared to get on the stage so I went backstage and turned to theatre.  And yep, when I was a little girl, I totally did lie in bed rehearsing my acceptance speeches.  I sang harmony to every pop song on the radio, much to the annoyance of the car pool moms (didn’t sound so hot...what does a 7 year old know about harmony?), and when I wrote my first good song, it was the closest thing to magic I’ve ever felt.  So this is what I am supposed to be doing, regardless of outcome.  And if I fall down and fall shy, I have some really extraordinary people to help pick me up and walk it off, because I didn’t sacrifice them in the name of someone else’s version of success.

So I guess that’s where I end up.  Reckless abandon, risking devastation, 10-4.

I have the desire.