Chapter 18 : House of Cards
Over the last week I’ve had this nagging doubt that the infrastructure I’m attempting to build as I start my new life won’t lead to a sturdy foundation but rather a flimsy house of cards. How am I to know? My therapy session last night was full of defense mechanisms and my wall was fully up, so this article will be my extra session for the week.
People often express when upset, anxious, or bored that they feel ‘stuck’, as if Cousin Vinny is speeding by while their tires churn through mountains of mud. My problem is a bit different, I don’t feel stuck. Rather I believe I’m in the midst of changing gears, going from first gear into second gear, and I’m struggling to grapple with the proper motivation to do just that.
The “P” word has been thrown around me whenever a conflict came up in my past or present. Not pathetic, not pithy, not pretentious, not perplex, but potential. As if somehow I have this great wealth of knowledge and expertise to share with this world, but only if I decided to do so. I must admit I get it. There are moments when I fail no doubt, but there are moments I can look back when I felt like I soared.
Here is a tiny example. Our first week in SE Asia as part of my graduate school program, our professor held a small contest during the academic portion of the week to identify who provided the most thought provoking, attentive, and substantive discussion comments to the class. The idea no doubt was to encourage us to participate since it was the summer, the program would end in one month, and you could see in each other eye’s that some students had already checked out. (Oh the eyes, how much we give away through our eyes!). The winner would be selected by their peers and would receive a small treat at the end of the week, an opportunity to “sky dive” in the high flyer simulator in Singapore.
I decided at the outset of that week that I would win this contest, and not only so, I would try to win. There is a vital difference between those two statements. Sometimes we win with little effort or smarts(cough, cough), or sometimes we need to really scrap and claw to win (Come on Jags!). I will fully admit that too often in my life I’ve been able to win (or at least get by) with little to no effort. Somehow this has become a defense mechanism for me, a theory I fall back on when I lose. I think in my head “Well I only lost because I didn’t try”, and yes I’ve always been a sore loser as evidenced by my lack of a 7 iron.
So now that I decided to win and to try to win it meant I wanted to win. Ahh the word “want”. Especially under the guise of how older generations view millennials, “want” has become a word that is often used through the prism of selfishness. That if we did everything we wanted we would just lay on the couch all day watching Netflix. But what if what we wanted actually enabled us to succeed, and what we thought we “should” do actually prevented us from succeeding. Sort of a weird conundrum but bear with me.
When Friday rolled around and it was time to vote I knew I had the contest in the bag. Not because I thought I was the winner (I didn’t vote for myself), but it was clear to me in the conversations I was having with peers both inside and outside the classroom that my comments had sparked their interest and increased their level of engagement with the course and trip at large. (I should note by the end of the month long trip my comments became a bit of a personal quirk because they all followed a 3 step process : bring up a past learning, reference the new learning, identify how the difference between those two learnings is important).
When my name was announced as the winner I was flush with pride. On the bus ride leaving Singapore University on our way to the Tiger Brewery (to cap of our week of classroom learning), I was able to snag a solo window seat and just look outside at the countryside. In that moment, sitting in that seat, I had done something so rare up to that point in my life. I had hit my potential. I decided I wanted something, I went for it, and I got it. The realization was so cathartic, so powerful, that to this day I still revel in the smile that came forth across my face that day. That moment is very similar to my “coming out” moment, when what I decided I wanted to do trumped what I thought I should be doing.
Circling back to the idea of the “P” word, one thing I’ve realized in therapy is that I don’t have a fear of failure, but rather a fear of success. That if try really hard and don’t succeed, well then I can’t fall back on “Well If I had tried”. But what if I try really hard and then do succeed? I don’t like the limelight, I despise trophies, don’t desire extravagance, and ceremonies occupy a Winterfellian place in my heart. So if I’m not motivated by the allures of success, what does motivate me? Fear, and thus the difficulty in getting into 2nd gear.
It’s time to for me stop tapping on the window and just open the door. As one life ends, a new life must begin.
More to come,
Mike
One Last Time — Christopher Jackson from “Hamilton”
