The Ceaseless Cycle of the Refusal to Settle

For Adam Saunders. (Thank you.)

The main reason I have failed at maintaining a blog is that I often think that my work isn’t good enough. Typically, I spend more time writing than I originally allocated for the task. You may have even appreciated the first draft of this post (Forgive my arrogant assumption that you will this one.), but I made drastic changes to it multiple times. I wasn’t happy with it.

My goal isn’t to make others proud of me. I wish to make only myself proud. While that may not resemble even the least bit of a selfless act, I don’t see it as a selfish one either. Maybe I’m wrong. But in either case, such a goal is redundant if my expectations of myself are certainly higher than others’ expectations of me.

Having had to grade my own work while homeschooling, I made a promise to myself to only submit my work when the fleeting moment comes in which I feel proud to have my name stamped on it.

Nearly two years after making excuses to a mentor who wished to view a paper I wrote for Grade 12, I forced myself to publicly publish it. In the many months before I decided to, however, I revisited my paper numerous times. I would constantly edit it and would begin to despise it ever more so. How on earth could I have been proud to have submitted that paper in such a state? I asked myself. Even now I think it requires a reworking.

I am willing to bet that in a month (I’m being generous.) I will feel the same about this piece too.

While both seemed accomplishments at their respective times, I know that I can always do a better job. It is unreasonable then if I allow myself to simply stop and bask in the glory of my past achievements. (But I realised that it is unreasonable too not to publish them. While I may be able to improve them, opportunity costs still exist, and there are much more pressing matters I have at hand.)

Generally speaking, I realise upon reaching my goals that they weren’t great enough to begin with. I will never be content with the present version of myself — both the present in which I am writing this and the present in which you are reading this. There will always be so much more that I have to do, so much more that I have to learn. In response, I then aim for higher goals, and so, the ceaseless cycle begins yet another revolution…

I suppose that the goal of self-improvement, or, as you put it, of growth ‘as a human being’, can be considered both a bane and a boon. I may never truly be happy with myself, but I will ever so gladly live with that bane. After all, to live without striving to self-improve would only be to cheat oneself, and to do so would be an even more unbearable curse.