"I found that if you have a goal, that you might not reach it. But if you don't have one, then you are never disappointed. And I gotta tell ya... it feels phenomenal."On one level, the first part of his statement is true. The second part, about how it feels, is not. It wouldn't feel phenomenal, it would just not feel anything, which, to Vaughn's character, is better than feeling anything bad.
I've been realizing lately, slowly, that I have inadvertently subscribed to La Fleur's life philosophy. The pain of disappointment or rejection has slowly taught me that it's safer not to try, not to risk, not to love. It creates a numbness, something akin to anesthesia, that clouds the way I see the world. Like going to the oral surgeon and getting happy gas. In the moment, it's a relief from pain. But it would be completely impossible to live the rest of your life well under that influence, because you wouldn't be there, present, engaging in the moment by moment details. I wonder if that's why I have such a poor memory generally? Maybe I'm under my own anesthetic fear-induced fog...
I'm not going to hash through all the reasons or experiences that may have fueled this fear-induced apathy, at least not on this blog (it might be helpful to sort through on my own). But I want to re-engage. I'm starting to see that the things worth having and doing are the things, inevitably, that will require something costly from me. They will take work. They will take tears. They will take risk and there will be failure in my attempts to succeed and experience those good things. For some of you, that's basic stuff. Common sense.
All this ultimately leads to the question, "What do I want?"*
For too long, I haven't allowed myself to dream, desire, hope for good things and be willing to strive and pursue them. When you don't know what you want, all the effort and energy that you put into something only feels wasted and draining, which slowly builds up as subtle ammunition, fueling the fires of resignation. Even if the effort succeeds, if it wasn't what I wanted, there was a sense of disappointment, confusion and betrayal. I had misunderstood that merely working hard at something would not make the attaining satisfying. And I never could figure out why, until over the past year or so, I began slowly seeing a correlation. I need to figure out what I want. And if I don't know, I need to put my energy into tearing down the things that keep me from dreaming and not do anything else until I'm free to. Most of you are pretty clear on things you want, I'd imagine. Maybe not, though, and that would be comforting to know I'm not alone. However, even if I'm just really slow to this thing that should be common sense, I feel like it's good to be realizing it and I want to give it my attention, because it definitely seems to have dominated the way I've lived for... a long time.
* Some of you might argue and say, "Your question should be, 'What does God want?'" and I can appreciate that idea. I'm operating out of the mindset that God, as our Father, has created us uniquely and intentionally, and desires us to be fully alive and fully ourselves. Some of you maybe struggle with knowing your desires too intimately and fighting for those against what you know God wants for you instead. Then, yes, your question should filled with that submission and humility, "What do you want, God?" Since I spend most of my time and energy trying to please people, not fail, avoid disappointing anyone, asking God what He wants does nothing to bring back to life the person He has created me to be. I think partially, God wants us to want things and feel safe in His love to pursue them and live well and love ridiculously. Like a Father with kids in the backyard kind of thing. No good parent tries to micro-manage the way their kids are playing—they simply enjoy watching their kids play well. So, while I do think it's a crucial question to ask—what God wants—for me, right now, that would be an irrelevant, Sunday-school answer to my issue of refusing to dream or set goals or pursue things out of fear of failure or disappointment. I need to know what I want, so that I FEEL the weight of hoping for something, submitting myself and trusting God, working hard to receive the prize of what I'm desiring, wrestling with the failures and successes that will no doubt follow. I feel like as I'm realizing this, God wants me to take the time and energy to figure out what I want and stop believing that what I want doesn't matter or will only bring disappointment, etc.
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