I've been wanting to return to the world of public journal writing for some time now. I just haven't provided myself with the time and motivation. I love distractions, their sweet siren song always draws me in and away from doing anything that seems the least bit constructive or productive. And that's what I'd like to focus on today: Achievement. It's a simple thing that I believe we've allowed to be degraded (by way of things like your "video game achievements" which really just state "spent time wasting time") and vilified. Society can be a bit perverse in how we acknowledge achievement. We can casually discount and forget the tremendous amount of effort it takes for a single parent to raise a child, going so far as to imply that it's abusive to raise a child with only one parent. Or we can hand out prestigious awards to people who have good ideas before they even attempt to implement them, and eventually that person turns out to be someone who stands opposed to all the good ideas they claimed to have.
Achievement is one of the supreme values or the human existence, the idea that your thoughts and actions made manifest in this world something of lasting and distinct significance to someone. Usually yourself, but others can also be included in the value assessment of the achievement's worth. To aspire to achieve is to put your Will to work in the direction of effecting change in the world. Though, I believe some aspirations can be focused in negative directions, I'm going to avoid talking about those for the sake of keeping the overall energy of this post positive.
Before I ramble further, I want to touch on Will, and why I insist on capitalizing it in this post. It's not the name of a person in this case, but to show due respect and reverence to the focused energy of human consciousness and decisiveness. I think many of us forget that Free Will, besides being an amazing gift (if that's your belief), also affords us with an astounding level of personal power. This power is not merely over ourselves, our own mental states and the states of our lives and choices and their resulting consequences, but power over other people as well. We choose how we will be, every single moment of every single day. Many people might argue that external factors and circumstances play significant roles in altering or limiting our choices, but ultimately the responsibility of who we will be, moment by moment, in response to every one of our experiences falls to ourselves. And that should be purely empowering and inspiring to all of us, and certainly a huge relief. Because, when it comes down to it, we decide how we want to be. We can choose, all the time, every time, to be happy. Peace over stress and anxiety, love over fear and anger, every time. Will is that exactly that, us imposing ourselves on and in existence. When we stand up and identify "This perspective/consciousness/personality/person/whatever, chooses to think, experience, act, react, and live in this way" we assert the power our "us-ness" into the fabric of reality. We write our own stories in a sense. Our Will is our pen, flowing across paper to bring our ideas forward into permanence, into being.
Achievement, therefore, is one of the most crucial aspects of the human experience. A life without it, or a life that cannot see where it had achieved, is doomed to feel unfulfilled and invalidated. What's the point of a life of no consequence? There is none. It's like being a rock: present but not moving, not changing, not experiencing, not alive. Now, I do not believe for a second that any life is absent achievement or meaning. All life, by sole virtue of being, is sacred and awe-inspiring (in this author's opinion). But how can those with a temporarily limited capacity for positive thinking (because we can all change our perspective to one of a positive nature, given time and effort) find achievement for themselves? Simply by changing their perspective, starting small, and having the motivation to be patient with the experience.
As I mentioned earlier, achievement is purely subjective. What one heralds as the greatest thing for mankind since the discovery of fire another would call only the best thing since sliced bread. We have to start in our own perceptions of ourselves and what we do to see what we accomplish. We start small, with something as ordinary as a list of daily chores or errands. All of them, things to accomplish. Once accomplished, we have achieved. And from the most humble of beginnings we find ourselves on the road to something greater. The old adage of having to learn to walk before you can run holds true. Those who desire to do great things must first learn to excel at the little things and to take true pride in those things. Pride has been labeled as a dirty word for far too long. But, being so strongly associated with the Seven Deadly Sins, its no wonder. For too long humankind has fallen victim to problems with group think, and though in some instances it's not necessarily a bad thing, in far too many instances it can be a horrible thing.
Pride is a bad thing if it leads someone to arrogance. But those two things are different states of being. Pride is truly knowing and acknowledging one's strengths, virtues, talents, and whatever other positive things one perceives them-self to have. Arrogance is the belief that one's strengths, virtues, talents and whatever else are better than they truly are and insisting it's that way oneself and to others. All too often pride is associated with negatives, a proud person is stubborn or cannot see their shortcomings. It gets associated with super villains and evil characters from fiction, like when Grand Moff Tarkin refuses to evacuate the Death Star in their "moment of triumph" just as a precaution. But that wasn't pride, that was arrogance. And arrogance is always associated with a disassociation from reality. It's ok to be proud of yourself, of what you can do, of what you have done. No one can tell you otherwise, and if they try then you shouldn't listen. As long as you can say, after honest self-reflection, that what you perceive about yourself is true, have at it. But, if you haven't taken the time to examine, or insist on something that might not be true, you've begun down the slippery slope. And that's the true horror of arrogance, that lack of connection to reality allows for more of the same, disconnected thinking and warped perceptions. Eventually, if you lose sight of who you really are, who will be left to tell you what you want or what will make you fulfilled?
Pride and humility go hand-in-hand, like two sides of the same coin. You must know what you do well to understand that what you do well is not everything. And in knowing that you cannot do everything well, you find humility. You find honesty with yourself, and that's an important thing to have. Strengths and weakness come and go. At one time I could run miles, do the splits, and break boards with the greatest of ease. I'm proud of those facts, but I humbly acknowledge I can't do those things right now. But that does not have to so forever. I can begin the long road of being able to run miles again, practice the splits, and hone my latent black belt-ness right back to the bane of wooden planks' existence.
I know that in my life I'd like to achieve. Though I'd love to get all sorts of accolades and acknowledgement from my fellow human beings, I want to achieve for me and only for me (but I wouldn't mind if other people reaped benefits from my achievement). Though it's a bit of a selfish attitude, I don't believe selfishness is a bad thing (that'll be another post). I feel it's important to do things for your own reasons, because doing things for other people may not yield the net positive you were hoping for. Writing this post today is an achievement for me. I found the time, made use of it, and did something I had wanted to do. Points for me. I can smile and say "I achieved something for myself today, and I'm proud of it." With a little focus and self-discipline, in the next few days I'll write something else, and then I will have achieved a measure of growing consistency with my posts. And thus, from the most humble of goals in the simplest of activities, I'll begin to Will my reality into one akin to a perpetual achievement machine, always moving forward to produce positive outcomes in my existence so that I can find happiness everyday in everything I do.
-M
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