A High Light & A Modest Path

For a long time I couldn’t feel enthusiasm. I had learned that this world wasn’t a safe place for showing unguarded interest. Not that I had any anyway.

It’s not that the world of enthusiasm was altogether unattractive to me, but that I felt I couldn’t trust it. Some of this opinion has stayed with me. However what has changed; is that now I practice it.

One of the biggest differences i’ve observed over the years of studying highly accomplished people is that, for some reason; they feel legitimate in documenting and organizing their ideas. There is a kind of baseline dignity that supports everything they think, build, & write.

Before I started the habit of writing, (and I don’t mean essays, I mean 3-4 word ideas that occasionally popped in my head) I had this extremely deep fear that, if I started writing down my ideas, the next day i’d see them for what they truly were, and my self hatred would topple whatever hodgepodge sanity I had left.

This isn’t what happened though. What actually happened was quite different. I was so pessimistic that seeing my bad ideas elicited nothing more than a: “yup”. They didn’t damage me because they didn’t surprise me.

Instead, what happened was, i’d come back and notice that, some of the ideas actually were good. This was a life-changing discovery. My fear was that i’d be one of those idiots who think you care about their ideas as much as they do. I hated people like that. Cynicism became my home. It would protect me. I could survive many things, but not embarrassment.

Why was I so fragile? Was I an egomaniac? Sure. That’s some of it. But the real truth I wanted to hide was how undeveloped I was. In some ways i’m a bit of a late bloomer.

One of the advantages of being a late bloomer is, you know what it is to subjugate yourself. If you want to do something meaningful, it may be useful to know what it’s like to play second fiddle. It may serve you to have suffered under a vision you do not completely share. For that is the state of most people you are trying to help.

If you accept that you’re helpless though, if you live eternally under subjugation and pretend to be okay with it, you’re damning yourself to a life of resentment.

The option to a life of resentment is the one thing most painful to a under-developed egomaniac: a modest proposal.

To move forward I require these two things:

1. A High Light,

   &

2. A Modest Path.

If the goal is not high enough to elicit a friend spitting out their drink in laughter, it’s probably not romantic enough to move your lazy, self hating, immature being into doing anything more difficult than what you already do. This is why you should keep your dreams a secret. Most people should only be told about your dreams after they happen.

This brings us to number two. A modest path. Crazy high aims and modest paths are not enemies. They are best friends. Here’s how Chesterton put it:

“The artistic temperament is a disease that afflicts amateurs. Artists of a large and wholesome vitality get rid of their art easily, as they breathe easily, or perspire easily. But in artists of less force, the thing becomes a pressure, and produces a definite pain, which is called the artistic temperament. Thus, very great artists are able to be ordinary men-- men like Shakespeare or Browning. There are many real tragedies of the artistic temperament, tragedies of vanity or violence or fear. But the great tragedy of the artistic temperament is that it cannot produce any art.”

This is part of the story I am still growing into. My primary goal right now is to never become a hypothetical creative. There is a weakness in me that wants to wait for paradise to create. A insecurity, a vanity. A vanity that sees myself as too high to merely put in this week’s work, too fragile to do my best and leave it at that. This is not only where creativity goes to die, this is where hope goes to die.

I remember hearing fantasy author Brandon Sanderson talk about how he wrote 13 books before selling a single one. He said he had made peace with the idea that; he would rather be the version of himself that writes than the version that doesn’t. He’d rather die having written 100 unpublished works than die having not. No ego. Just, “if i know i’ve done my best, i can live with that.”

This is not only the path to successful creating, this is the path to a life without regret.

Is this piece going to launch me into the rarified air of my dreams? I don’t know. But it’s one more chip off my calcified ego. It’s one more attempt to give my utmost for his highest. May his mercy make it enough.