
While in bed, waiting for sleep to claim me, I had the realization that part of my core goals is the desire to live a materially comfortable life, and have a family that I love and can take care of. As soon, as I had that realization, a second one came along; I’m ashamed of this goal.
A lot of people want to have a family and live a materially comfortable life; Fact; however, for untraceable reasons, I was under the assumption that those were secondary concerns in my case. I had read so many articles on forsaking comfort, plunging into the unknown, embracing uncertainty and so on, that I was convinced the artist’s way of mastery and solitude were my path; that any material and familial concerns were trivialities where my goals of being a polymath were concerned. Apparently I lied.
I want to master a creative craft, or many (still having trouble ironing out the details) and I want to live a life of adventure. I admire the ability to cast off material concerns for a beautiful dream, and I believe that we can live on a lot less than we think we need. However, I also want to be in love, I want to have a child or two, I want to live in an aesthetically pleasing home, and have a colorful yard, and I want these things, as much as I want to master a craft, yet for some reason I had come to believe that goals like these were small minded, self centered and for ordinary folk.
In my desire to be something great, I had convinced myself that these types of desires should come after loftier sounding goals, like designing a world class CV, being obsessed with my craft, self actualization and so on. My best guess, is that this mindset was the result of leaning too heavily on a popular belief that true ambition requires a relinquishing of romantic and familial ties.
On paper that declaration makes sense; you have to put in a lot of practice to be great at a craft or career, and to do that you need a lot of solitude; time away from friends, family and lovers. But, what if it happens that these things you have to give up are a core part of your identity? What if they’re the things that recharge you, and give your life the richness that allows you create from an authentic place? What happens then?
Note, this is is not an advocacy to make a bucket load of money before you venture out on your dreams; it is not a call to create on the condition of happiness, nor to use your loved ones as a productivity crutch. No. It’s about honesty and acceptance, about rejecting stereotypes and allowing life unfold through you and around you as organically as possible.
I’m not the only one who feels they should think, act and feel a certain way, and I’m definitely not the only one who feels like they’ve fallen short when they don’t conform to these ideals. A lot of us reject ourselves, we have no faith in our seemingly unremarkable inner worlds and so we’d rather follow another’s ideology. But I’m coming to realize that irrespective of our many similarities, we each have outlying characteristics: traits, points of view, experiences and so on, that no one else will ever have — seeds of uniqueness we’ve been entrusted to cultivate. And until we embrace the entirety of our “selves,” we will never find these seeds, talk less of plant them.
So I’m accepting my less than ideal desires, I’m choosing to be honest with what I actually want, and I’m choosing to let life unfold organically while I still struggle to achieve my ideals. Will I successfully pull it off? I don’t know, but I think there’s a good chance, because for reasons we don’t understand; life thrives on paradoxes like these. Peace.
