Finding my ambition
The moments that turned surviving into living.
I grew up in a few different places, but the one that left the biggest mark on me was a town of about two thousand people in southern Alberta, Canada. The landscape is dominated by the sky, prairie and the distant Rocky Mountains.
Socially, it was dominated by religion. The majority of people in my town are Mormons. If you aren’t Mormon, or if you choose not to follow that lifestyle, you are severely disconnected from local society.
In the life-cycle of a Mormon, there are a few critical stages. One is born and grows up under the lessons of the church. At a Mormon’s 18th birthday, life begins to differ for men and women. Men are expected to spend two years of their life on a mission, spreading the teachings of the Bible and Book of Mormon. For women, it’s expected that they go to post-secondary school (preferably Brigham Young University, a private school owned by the church) where they will complete a degree and find a returned missionary to marry to start a family as soon as possible.
I had what felt like an explosive exit from that lifestyle, but that’s something I’ve already written about.
For those of us who were older teenagers approaching the end of High School and weren’t following the Mormon lifestyle, it was a strange experience. Most of our peers had very specific goals in mind. They were going to follow “the plan” and we weren’t.
I remember a conversation I had with a friend of mine in the spring before graduation.
“Everyone here wants to do something with their lives, but I kinda don’t. I just…” he looked up at the sun, then back to me, perched on the arm of a park bench wearing my black jeans, boots and “leather” jacket. “I just want to sit here more, y’know?”
That feeling of just wanting to “sit here more” was pervasive. Unlike our peers, we didn’t have a planned life cycle. We didn’t know what the next step was supposed to be, so simply not taking one was appealing.
What ended up happening was most of my friends moved into a house in Lethbridge, the nearest real city. I didn’t join them. I was anxious about making enough money, and my parents disapproved. I let those feelings win.
I got a job working at a toy store in Lethbridge, and soon I was making enough money to buy my first car. I spent a lot of time with my friends in their house, and it was fun. We played a lot of video games and used the secret university student coupon code to get cheap pizzas, even though none of us were going to school.
This carried on for a few years. A few years where nothing substantial happened. We were just living our lives. Sitting there more. I was working at a job that wasn’t going anywhere. I had been telling myself for years that I wanted to be a writer, but I hadn’t written anything. I hadn’t been blogging, I hadn’t written a draft of a novel, I hadn’t even been writing adventures for Dungeons and Dragons. I was just sitting there.
The same friend I had that conversation with came to the realization around the same time I did. This could not go on. We needed to do something.
Fortune smiled on us. A few of our older friends were looking to move into a bigger space than their cramped, two-bedroom apartment in Calgary. We all searched rental sites and discovered that a small house with the rent split five ways would be cheaper than almost any rental apartment we could find.
We jumped on the opportunity. I got a job as an assistant manager with a pet store, and I told myself I would start writing. Nothing really came from it. I didn’t prioritize my writing. I would go to work, come home tired and play video games. I dated a few women but for a whole host of different reasons, that was Hell on Earth, so that stopped quickly.
After about a year, I realized I was doing the same thing I had been doing right after graduation. I was surviving. I wasn’t living. I wasn’t doing anything.
I was still hugely uncomfortable with the idea of trying to find a career to pursue for the rest of my life, but I did some reading. Two of my favourite authors, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman started their careers as journalists. I looked at local schools and decided to go to an open house for the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology. I spoke with some instructors from the journalism program and left, inspired.
This led to a chain of events that made me feel alive, and most of it is because I stopped thinking purely of myself.
I wanted to be a part of something. I wanted to be part of a community, a society, and I wanted to contribute to it. I started making meaningful friendships, and building on the friendships I already had. I started dating the woman I would later propose to.
A book that’s been important to me my entire life is Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book. The lines that resonate the most with me are of course from The Law of the Jungle, with two lines being of particular significance.
As the creeper that girdles the tree trunk, the law runneth forward and back;
For the strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack.
I thought I would be perfectly content with surviving, but life for me never really came together until I started to want something.
As soon as I started reaching upwards for something, I found the community I surround myself in, and my life has never been better.
Find your ambition. Keep it close.
