Epic Quest progress report: Today is day 9. Total word count: 3115 words.
Wherever you go … There you are.
It sounds like the silliest of ’80s pop philosophy, a truism so ridiculously obvious it must be mocking something, or somebody. But it’s also a truth.
A truth that goes far beyond its literal meaning.
It’s a truth we too often overlook in our culture of more.
Because we convince ourselves that if we can just have that, whatever that is, then we can be happy.
If I can just have a better job, or a different spouse, or a hundred grand in the bank, I can be happy. If I can just drive that car or live in that house or join that club, life will be fulfilling. If I can just finish my book, or get a promotion, or get my movie made, I’ll be a success.
If I could just live in a society with more fairness, or find a mentor who doesn’t care about my past, or live in a world without a pandemic, how much better things would be!
But we overlook an obvious common denominator in all these hypotheticals: Ourselves.
Because whatever I wish for, whatever I want to be better, whatever I find dissatisfying about my life–I’m part of it.
Sometimes the biggest part. Sometimes one of the smallest. But I’m always the biggest part of my life I have any control over.
Empowering–and more than a little frightening.
Because if I want a better job, or a different spouse, or money in the bank, then it’s up to me to figure out how to get those things. Then it’s up to me to decide whether I’m willing to do what I must to make it happen. Then it’s up to me to actually take action on what I must do.
Each of those steps is under my control.
And when I take action, it’s up to me to recognize that the universe is under no obligation to cooperate with me. And that becomes part of my choice: knowing the change I want to make will almost certainly take longer, and require more work, and cause me more pain than I imagine it will–am I still willing to pursue it?
Knowing that the world is sure to be a different place when I finish than it is when I start, and that might mean I feel differently about this change then than I do now–is it still what I want to do?
And knowing the same person will be looking back at me from the mirror then as now, knowing the flaws I see in them will probably still be there–what kind of journey can I bring myself to take with them?
These are the questions we should be asking ourselves. Everything else–everything else–is just scenery.