Wanting something really, really badly does not make it happen. I tell my kids this all the time. “Wanting is not the same as having.” You’ve got to work at what you want. And work. And then work some more. It takes more than wanting; it takes commitment. Real and true see-it-through commitment. It’s how marriages that last fifteen minutes past the honeymoon are made. It’s how we got to the moon. How the lightbulb was invented. How Beethoven Moonlighted his Sonata. And it works in most cases.
Most.
There are some things you can work on until you die and never get a lot better at. For example, I could paint until I painted straight through the canvas, and nothing coming out of my art-muse is ever going to look like a Monet. Jackson Pollock, perhaps, but not Monet. I could kick a soccer ball until my feet fall off and never play like Ronaldinho. I could try to cook like Julia Child . . . okay, I can cook like Julia Child. Just not the lobsters. I don’t work with food that can beg for its life as I stick it in the pot.
My point is, I could write until the stars turned blue and fell from the sky, and it would never be Shakespeare – or a host of other writers whose turns-of-phrase melt bone, change hearts, and stop wars. I’m not saying this to be self-deprecating. I could melt hearts if I wanted to. Or at least create heart-burn. 🙂 KIDDING. What I’m saying is, I think I need to focus on what I am rather than what I’m not. Because I’ve spent a lot of time distressing over things I do and whether or not they are as good as (fill-in-the-blank) instead of focusing on whether I’m as good as I am. And I think all it has done is slowed me down, and made me less than I could be.
The Army’s got it right with that whole “Be All That You Can Be” thing. They just need to add “And Be Happy With It.”
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