No Matter What.....

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You can’t just follow your dreams. I used to think that was enough. It seems noble when you say it to people… “Hey man. You’ve got to follow your heart no matter what.” The thing is most people forget about the “no matter what” and concentrate on the “follow your heart” bit. When you say “follow your heart” people relate to that immediately because everyone has a heart and there’s something in it that they want to do or be. It’s easy to grasp that part. But when you get down to the “no matter what” part things get a bit tricky. What is “no matter what”? What if “no matter what” sucks ass? What if “no matter what” becomes more than you can bear and you just can’t follow any more?

Following is passive. Being passive never got much done. Passive is nice to be with and cool in certain situations but mostly it just stays too long and doesn’t get the hints that it’s time to go home.

You’ve got to fight for your dreams. You’ve got to fight just to keep them alive let alone actually realize them. When you’re doing “no matter what” you’re fighting for your dream. So keep fighting. But if you find that you can’t be ok with that then maybe you should be doing something else.

When you build something up and focus your mind on only that one thing for an extended time frame, you start to forget everything else. When you put so much emphasis on one thing, that one thing begins to define you. That one thing becomes so big that it is bound to disappoint you. All the little things you lost focus on are now out of your life or forgotten or hazy and they cannot comfort you when that one thing lets you down. I’m not saying that having a very important “one thing” is bad. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t try hard to reach your dreams. But enjoy life along the way. Don’t stop doing all of the things you enjoy. We humans are fragile…we get broken and hurt. We need inspiration. In addition to great films and poetry and songs it is all of life’s little pleasures that inspire us. It’s the coffee in the morning and the painting and small tasks and social gatherings where that one thing isn’t mentioned. It’s the food and drink and fishing and yard work that inspire us to be better than ever at that one thing.

I built up a dream. I put it on a pedestal. I forgot about a lot of other smaller things that I enjoy in life. I placed my life’s value and enjoyment in the hands of an idea that was somewhat idealistic. After a few months I started to feel like a failure because my idealistic picture of myself living out my dream had not become a reality. So I put my head down and worked harder and after a few months felt even more like a failure because of the same reasons. I never thought to reconsider the details and parameters of my dream. I never thought to acknowledge the small victories along the way. I never thought to mark the milestones. I just kept looking for this utopia-life in which everything I thought I wanted was happening around me.

There is more to life than that one thing. There always has been and there always will be. Try hard. Do your best. Get better. When you fall down get back up. Don’t let disappointment stop you from trying some more. Don’t let failure make you fall to pieces. But don’t let ‘success’ define you either. That one thing is important and you should keep it important. But it isn’t who you are. It is not the entirety of you. Your personhood, your happiness, your fulfillment, your love, your hope, and the sum of your life does not rise and fall on the outcome of that one thing. You are more than that one thing. You are the masterful artist and that one thing is your product. You hold the reigns and that one thing cannot guide you…so don’t let it.

There’s a scene in the movie “Greenberg” where the main character is talking to his best friend. The two have lived in different cities for ten years and they are having some difficulty reuniting because of things that happened fifteen years ago. The two had been in a band during those years and Greenberg ruined their only chance at a record deal by turning down their only offer. His best friend tells him that he’s finally embracing the life he never expected.

I understand this statement perfectly. You have a dream that doesn’t pan out. You always feel ‘stuck’ no matter what else you do because you can’t let go of this idea that you could have been different or that your life could have been better. Sometimes you meet people who once had the very dream that you have and they are bitter, unhappy people. Sometimes you meet people who moved on from their dream and did what Greenberg’s friend did. The latter is usually the happier, more fulfilled person. There is value in embracing the life you live in the present. Bitterness eats you up inside and can taint every aspect of your life. You stop enjoying the thing you love because it never delivers.

I think that Greenberg’s friend was in a good place but it took him fifteen years to reach that place. I think he gave up on his dream when maybe he didn’t have to. I think he spent a lot of time wishing and hoping that things had been different but without knowing how to change things he was forced to live a life that he ultimately didn’t want because it wasn’t what he expected. It’s not that it was a bad life…just not the one he expected. This, in my opinion is the worst possible thing he could have done. He could have simply moved on or he could have kept fighting for his expected life. He sat somewhere in the middle though wanting a different life but also not really wanting to go after it and also not wanting to acknowledge that he was the one steering his life the whole time.

I’ve always thought of giving up in negative terms. This is something I learned by default. No one ever sat me down and told me that giving up was wrong or bad. Instead it was instilled in me that “finishing what you start” is a noble and good thing that builds character. Now I whole-heartedly agree that finishing what you start is a good thing if what you’ve started is a good thing. Everything you do builds character but what happens if you start something that you never should have started?

I have a bad character trait called smoking. I call this a character trait because it’s more than a habit now; it’s part of my personality. When you start smoking you never think of yourself as a smoker. Smokers who have smoked for a long time still don’t think of themselves as smokers. They say that they just smoke socially or that they are trying to quit. This is because we’ve all seen real smokers; the woman at the Laundromat who has a voice like chalk, and wheezes as she walks and coughs every five minutes. We don’t want to think of ourselves this way. So we refuse to acknowledge that we are smokers. But when you smoke every day; when you get uncomfortable when you haven’t smoked for a few hours then you are a smoker. It’s part of who you are. It’s a character trait.

I should have never started smoking and the best thing for it would be to quit. In this instance quitting would be a good thing that would build good character. I did start smoking though and I built myself a character that I do not like and do not want to be. Yet I do want to be that or I would stop.

Smoking is an easy example but the point holds true. What if my dream is bad for me? What if the thing I started is a bad thing that will build bad character? Quitting is not always negative and finishing what you start is not always positive. Giving something up so that you can live a better life seems like a reasonable and even good response. But it still feels bad.
Greenberg’s friend couldn’t decide what to do. He couldn’t give up and he couldn’t have what he wanted. He was the bitter, unhappy person who felt trapped not only by the life he was living but also by the life he wanted to be living. He didn’t want the one and couldn’t have the other and it was all really in his own mind.

What if you are doing something you ought to give up? In that circumstance then giving up should be applauded and in certain cases, like smoking, it usually is. But when people give up a dream they are thought poorly of. People assume they weren’t good enough or that they didn’t work hard enough. Maybe they weren’t good enough and that being the case we ought to pat them on the back for quitting. Surely it’s a noble thing to admit to oneself and the world that although you made a valiant effort you ultimately were not up to scratch and have decided to move on in order to find something more suitable?

I’m not really talking about giving up here though. I’m talking about the fact that life will kick your ass time and again and that’s not something you can get away from. A dream is not going to look in reality like it does in your head. It’s not always going to feel good. Life is difficult. Life is hard. Life doesn’t really give a crap if you succeed or fail. If life cared at all about you we would have no rich and no poor. People would all look exactly alike if life was trying to make us all comfortable. There would be no ugliness and no prettiness. But life is just life and we live it until we are dead. So why do we waste time being depressed and unhappy and wishing for things we don’t have?

Greenberg’s friend was doing something that I want to do. He was accepting his present tense and being ok with it. We are all smart people and we can all realize that whether you are born privileged or disadvantaged you can’t expect to be fabulous all of the time. So maybe it’s better to be ok with the present tense wherever you happen to be…good times and bad…thick and thin…sickness and health. It doesn’t matter if you give up your dream or if you fight for it. Just be ok with your decision whatever you do.

As for me? I fight on.

Response...Something Inside Me

This is a response to the previous blogs comments. I had originally intended to write something about this in the previous blog but it didn’t seem to pan out. After the comments I realized that I didn’t quite express myself accurately so here goes….

I picked up a guitar one day and began learning to play. Another day I wrote a song. Another day I stopped watching t.v. and wrote another song instead. After that I played my guitar most days and became better at it. Some days I wrote songs and in the past 14 years I’ve gotten better at that. Another day I played my first song for an audience…I kept doing that and got better at that too.

When I was in college studying Biology and later while getting my masters in Biotechnology I was completely distracted by music on a daily basis. Whenever I had a minute free I’d be writing or playing or trying to figure out how to get enough money together to record an album. One day I started recording my own songs. I kept doing that and I’m still getting better at that too.

One day I made a decision to make music my career. I stopped teaching so that I could do that. I turned down a job with a missions organization so that I could do that. I started playing lots of shows in my hometown. I got better at playing shows and got better at promoting myself. Later I turned down a job with the company I’d been stationed at during my masters degree so that I could move to America and continue pursuing music.

The examples above are the highlights but the point is this… For the past 14 years I’ve been working steadily in this direction. It has been said that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become truly successful at something. I don’t know if I’ve reached that mark yet but I’ve certainly put in a few. Over the span of 14 years a person makes a lot of decisions… In my own life my decisions keep drawing me further down the path of a career in music. It doesn’t happen all at once but when you look back you realize that returning to where you once were would take almost as much work as it took to get to where you are now. When you stop using a path it stops looking so much like a path and becomes a faded remnant of a trail that once was. Bridges get burned and bottles get broken on your back trail. To go back might sometimes be necessary but it’s not going to be any easier than putting your head down and slogging it out with whatever is ahead that keeps making yesterday look so attractive.

What I’m saying is this… I am where I am on purpose. It’s no accident that I do the job I do or that I live where I live or that I’ve made the decisions I’ve made. Little by little, one decision at a time, I have burned bridges and broken bottles for 14 years to get here. I’m not sure just anyone would want to live in my shoes but I do want to live in them. I don’t expect everyone to understand what I’m doing but I do understand it. In general I’m excessively happy that I’ve made it this far and that I’m on the path that I’m on. There are specific things about the current moment in the path that I don’t like and I’ll admit that I probably spend way too much time dwelling on those things and preaching my woes for the world to read. I’m a complainer…so sue me.

In writing about the songs on the album I’m trying to capture the emotions of the songs and of the album in general. Sometimes that means putting myself back in the moment of whatever I was feeling at the time. The song “Something Inside Me” was written when I was absolutely confounded and frustrated and ready to throw in the towel. I wanted to give up. I wanted to stop trying. I even tried to give up music. But I found out that my passion for music and writing is something that is deep within me that I can’t control and which will never die. It’s too deeply ingrained. Perhaps it’s by design that I am this way. So I wrote the words “I’ll never give up because I don’t know what those words mean.” At the time in my life when I was utterly frustrated, completely depressed and most wanted to give up I wrote a song about not giving up. When I say I can’t give up… I really mean I can’t give up.

The album was titled “Beautiful Frustration” not because I thought it sounded like a cool name but because it captured the sentiment of everything I’d been through to get the thing done. It was the overall emotion that I was feeling during the writing of that album. I was frustrated but it was the kind of frustration you get when you are continuously working on a project that seems to progress too slowly. But there is progress and that’s why it’s beautiful. It’s the knocking of yourself against a problem over and over again that makes you stronger and eventually leads to a solution. I imagine that the guys who built the space shuttle, or Einstein (no I’m not comparing myself to them) would understand ‘beautiful frustration’ completely.

I am beautifully frustrated. My apologies if I let off steam about that too often. But I am determined and I am stubborn and I am committed to this thing I’ve set out to do. I’m investing in a future that I can live with instead of fixing my present to be satisfied now.

I will reach 10,000 hours. I will reach my goals. Say what you will or think what you will, I am realizing that I don’t much care anymore what people think because it doesn’t matter and it doesn’t change what I’m going to do. When I find myself in those moments of complete disgust and frustration with my reality I remember this song and I tell myself that “I’m trying…come try with me. I’m fighting…come fight with me. I’m flying…come fly with me.” I sing those words to the heavens as a kind of challenge. I sing those words to the walls that seem daunting as if I were a boxer squaring my shoulders to my opponent, bouncing lightly on the balls of my feet, glint in my eye, jaw set and saying, “Alright. Let’s do this.”