Ever since I was a kid, I've had people telling me that I was special. That I was above average, that I would accomplish great things in my lifetime. "You've got potential," they told me -- and then they would walk off, leaving me to wonder what they were talking about before I stuck my head back into whatever book or fantasy world I was currently inhabiting. I had all this enormous, wonderous potential, but no one ever really told me what to do with it. I guess they all thought if I had so much of it, I should know how to use it. Like it came with an instruction manual or something. Maybe none of them wanted the responsibility of helping me live up to that potential, so none of them would have to take the blame if I failed. Looking back, it was a lot like being told I had wings I'd never seen, and then being tossed off a cliff so they could see if I flew.
I had a lot of interests as a kid -- still do, really -- in all manner of subjects. I read voraciously, just about anything I could get my hands on, and I absorbed it all like a sponge. I read histories and biographies, manifestos, journals and diaries, papers and publications in fields of study ranging from medicine to astronomy to biology to politics to computer science. I read poetry and prose, and I absolutely devoured fiction, all the classics and much of the obscure. Frost, Angelou, Cummings, Shelley, Keats, Byron. Tolkien, Rowling, Pullman, Rice, King. Kipling and Stevenson and Wells.
I competed in marksmanship riflery competitions and public speaking contests in the local 4-H club, and went to National levels in both fields. I took a year of chorus in high school and really polished my own natural talent for singing. Never could dance worth a damn (I'm too white, haha) but I could always belt it out. I wrote papers on the American Civil War and English literature and cellular biological processes for amusement. And I studied computers, hardware and software, and how the internet worked, and how to build networks. All of that was back when the internet was still rather new, dial-up was king, and people were still using 3.5 floppies. Yeah, yeah, I'm a dinosaur. Shut the hell up.
In college, I wasn't much better. My interests were still scattered all over the place, and my energies were usually diffused over a wide range of material. I never really focused on anything in particular. I just cast my net wide over the surface of the ocean and dragged in not much of nothing. There's probably a lesson in there for someone else, but I refuse to be ashamed of that. Because of my 'lack of focus', I probably know more about any subject you could name than anyone else I know. 'I know a lot about a little, and a little about a lot.' In fact, I don't think it would be inaccurate to say I may well be the smartest man in this town.
And yet.
I'm so smart, and I'm so clever, but I'm still living in this little one-horse shithole. I have made exactly nothing of my life so far. All that potential that everyone used to see in me has apparently gone to waste, I guess. That's probably my fault. After all, if I had all that potential, I should have known what to do with it, right?
But I didn't. I think there's something you need more than potential, whatever the hell that is. You need passion in your life, a driving force that doesn't let you stop and rest because dammit there are THINGS TO DO. That is one quality that I have always lacked, I think. I've always thought of passion as this fire that burns down deep in your spirit, and everyone has it, some more, some less. The people I've always envied have always seemed to have such an abundance of it. I would look at them, and it was like looking at a forest fire, or a nuclear reaction. And then I'd look at myself and see a puny, piddling roman candle sputtering and struggling to make one more spark of light. Nothing in the world has ever made me feel so inadequate as a human being as the feeling I get when I examine my own lack of passion.
It's not always like that, either, and that's the worst part. There are times I can really get fired up about something and I can feel that fire inside me build up like a great, churning star, heat and passion and driving light that just wells up in me and inspires me to DO SOMETHING...but, it never lasts. Never. It always seems like it's just enough to get me started, to take the first steps, and sometimes even to make it through the first obstacles. But before too long, it dwindles and fizzles out, and I'm left alone on this strange, hard path without any of the light that brought me this far. As though it only burns bright enough to lure me deeper into the darkness, where the shadows of doubt can feast on the twitching corpse of my potential.
Part of me wonders if this is what it's like for everyone. Maybe those other people, those bright and shiny people feel this way too. Maybe their fire doesn't burn all the time, maybe it's just like mine. Perhaps the key is not to rely on the light as we walk the paths we choose, but to hold on to our faith that the light will come back when we really need it if only we just keep on walking. I think I like that thought.
I've been in the dark a long time, now. You could almost say I've grown comfortable in it. I think it's time I started walking again, though. Perhaps its time to challenge the darkness, and trust that my light will come back to me when the time is right. My doubts and my fears have nibbled and gnawed on my potential for a long time too, and I suspect there's not as much of it now as there once was. But maybe...maybe it'll be enough.
Shine a light, baby.
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