Self Motivation The Search for Perfect Timing

I’ve been promising myself for months now that I’d get back to writing here. I told myself that I shouldn’t leave this blog, that it needed the most… and I’d also telling myself that as soon as the time is right, or as soon as I decide on the perfect subject to write about, I’d get right back on the blogging.

What I realized after weeks of this same mental conversation is that there is no “right time.” The search for perfect timing is as useless with so many distractions to keep you from your goal— outlaws to control in one case, books to read and work to accomplish in the other—you eventually forget what it was you set out to do. You put it off and you put it off and one day you find yourself dried out, with no energy left to fulfill that goal you once believed was yours.

It might be a bit too deep to image by applying to a blog writing, I’ll admit to that. But I don’t just mean blogging. I mean think about it. How many of us tell ourselves (and anyone who’ll listen), “I’ll have a six-pack by August,” or “I’m definitely going to do some traveling this year,” or even something as simple as, “Today, I’ll go to the bank,” and yet never do any of it?

I’m a Nike and Guess  fan so it may sound unfair, but it’s also true: the best way to start doing something is to stop talking about it and just do it. Take that class, write that novel (another thing I’ve been putting off for years, actually), run that race. Do it before your mind gets the chance to talk itself out of the task with its million and one reasons for delay… because while it’s easier to put off than to motivate, it’s a lot less fulfilling as well.

Where’d I get all of this? Why, a movies that i watched, of course (and certain personal experiences of late, but I’d rather talk about the movie). It’s a relatively old one and already out on film, one starring Leo diCaprio—I’d heard a lot of people say it sucked, but that the original novel version didn’t.    


   
             
The Beach by Alex Garland: a story about a British backpacker who finds himself on a hidden paradise in Thailand with a community of other travelers (not tourists, note the difference). I haven’t finished the movie yet, but so far it’s inspired me to take that trip to Anywhere that I’ve been, again, telling myself I’d go on this year. The line that got me was this:

"If I’d learn one thing from traveling, it was that the way to get things done was to go ahead and do them. Don’t talk about going to Borneo. Book a ticket,  pack a bag, and it just happens."

That’s a good bit of advice if there ever was one for us lazy bums out there. If it’s too long to tattoo on your arm as a reminder, it's simpler and easier to remember: Do or do not. There is no try.

The Super Heroes In Me

 

Superheroes. A concept that has been tackled in so many ways over so many years that I figured no original work can ever come of it again.


But think about it--the superhero genre has gone almost every direction imaginable since its conception in the early twentieth century. Let's start with the classics: we got an orphaned alien humanoid who works as a journalist, some geeky kid bit by a radioactive spider, a billionaire fighting crime on the side with a glorified tool belt, a blind dude seeking justice for his father's murder, a science-experiment victim who goes nuts and turns green when his pulse rate goes too high, a group of scientists who got too close to some mysterious space dust... I could go on.

Then some people tried to philosophize the genre and voila! We have the Watchmen. A commentary-type tale of two generations of men and women who devoted the prime of their lives to becoming "real-life superheroes." The graphic novel tackles the idea of regular people putting on masks and fighting crime in the streets, minus any super-powers. Just the next-door neighbor trying to fight for the good and right, albeit in a costume. Is it possible? Can it be tolerated? What does such a choice do to a person? 


So we got all these different views of the superhero...then Hollywood took it to another level (as it so often does). Movies, sequels, prequels, trilogies, remakes, revivals, spin-offs. There came TV series, films based on the novels and further novels based on the films. Out came websites and fan sites and forums. Merchandising, The Superhero--has now become cliche. The modern superhero is anything and everything: a vampire, a werewolf, a kid with a wand and a knack for getting in and out of trouble. 

Just Keep Swimming

Fact: things don’t always work out. Maybe a situation doesn’t turn out as planned, or someone lets us down, or we find that a goal to be achieved is beyond us at that point in time.

Now I’m a positive person. I couldn’t have had a childhood more helpful to hopefulness, so I grew up in a point to see in every dark cloud and the bright side to every uninteresting situation.
But as we get older, the dark clouds grow and the light that lines them gets slimmer. Life’s disappointments, big and small, tend to do that.

As I approached what the scientific world calls adulthood, I had to adjust my angle to accommodate certain truths about the world—for example, that things don’t always work out (as I’ve said) and that bad things happen to good people.

That fear sometimes gets the best of us and that we are not protected to failure.
And that we cannot always be sure.

And that we aren’t Superman and therefore we can only achieve within the limits of our humanity.
But I’ve also learned something else in my brief and rather uneventful (in terms of suffering, at least) time on this planet: that limitations can be overcome. That despite the disappointments we face every day, despite the mistakes we make and the people we hurt and who hurt us, we can find greatness and success and comfort… as long as we keep going.

We need to learn to forgive ourselves for our failings and be able to move on in order to succeed.
That, says my new adult mind, is what optimism is: being able to say “so what?” to our imperfections and mistakes and pushing forward.

It’s seeing the good and accepting the bad (because that will always be there), and not giving in to the comfort of self-pity. In my case for today, it’s forgiving me for not being able to do two things at the same time, no matter how much I want to give my 100% effort to both.

Those who fail are those who give up because they let their guilt at being damaged drag them down. What a pointless trouble! We’re all damaged. And things won’t always work out.

But so what? Imperfect creatures of what we are, as long as we’re alive there’s hope for success. To stop is to fail. So we’ve got to keep moving.