Success in the Eyes of an Idealist vs. a Realist
And how we define it in our relationship
Written by Porter Minix and Rachel Rock
(Rachel)Success. A word that means so many things to so many people. To me? It means that on this day, ten years from now, I will not be in the same place I am in now. I won’t be cramming for tomorrow’s test and risking food poisoning by eating questionable pizza. Instead, I will be sitting in a rocking chair with a pair of knitting needles and a skein of yarn, and I will own 29 cats. And every single one of those cats will have a personalized sweater made by yours truly.
Only joking. Not only do I not know how to knit, but I’m more of a dog person, myself. While living as a cat lady sounds exciting, I can promise you that being an old maid that knits outfits for her furry friends has never been that high on my list of priorities. Actually, I honestly couldn’t really pin down what exactly is even on that list. I’m not sure what I want in order to be successful. My idea of success is a living, growing thing. As I learn more about the world and I open myself to new experiences, I mold and shape my success right along with it. Twelve years ago my success was a little ball, simple and probably shaped like Hello Kitty. I was simple. All I wanted to be was a professional ballerina lifeguard princess. Today, despite my continued interest in the ballerina lifeguard princess career, I can’t say my ideals are as simple. They’re no longer a single organism, they’re now an entire ecosystem. They’re almost like a food chain. My smaller ideals get eaten by my larger ideals. Some of my smaller ideals make it out, but a lot of them are created for the purpose of fueling my larger ideals(Natural selection, eh?).
If you haven’t figured it out by now, I’m the idealist in this article. My life is full of potential “what can I do”s, instead of “what should I do”s. My life is not only in vivid color, but high definition has been installed as well. The problem with having such great screen quality is I often get distracted by the butterflies flitting past my nose, and sometimes it temporarily blocks my view of the bigger picture. Idealists see the world as an unfinished art piece. They see where they can add improvements and splashes of color. They see old, abandoned structures as a potential project. Idealists refuse to accept the state of the world when they can imagine better.
I’m not saying that realists are inferior to idealists, but they’re certainly less fun. I like to explore the whimsical thought of living in a hot air balloon when I’m retired and traveling the world under a brightly-colored air-filled fabric(kinda like Up, except I’m Russell, not Carl). As I’m explaining this to my realist boyfriend, he smiles, nods his head, and gives my shoulder a squeeze before firing a metaphorical cannon at my metaphorical balloon and rattles off about 54 reasons why that would never work. The fact that he’s right is irrelevant to me, I’m more invested in the sheer possibility. After all, if someone can travel around the world in a balloon, then they can certainly live in one. Just because it hasn’t happened doesn’t mean it can’t happen. Whether it should or not doesn’t matter to me. I see the world in a realm of possibility, not in a realm of probability.
So what do hot air balloons have to do with success? Not much, I’m afraid, unless your whole life plan revolves around working as the person who gives people rides in them at festivals(not saying that’s not an admirable career). What it does have to do with success is the POSSIBILITY of one day having the opportunity to fly over the Egyptian pyramids in a basket held up in the air by a sunset orange-colored fabric(yes, I attached a link of my favorite color), eating strawberry cheesecake, and rereading J.R.R Tolkien. Idealists and success have a very reckless, albeit exhilarating, relationship with each other. To idealists, success is not concrete or tangible. Like I stated earlier, it is ever evolving, it is ever growing, and it always challenges the boundaries set by society (man, oh man would I love to get into this, but alas, I’m writing an online article, not a novel). Both idealists and realists list success as something that improves their current state in life. However, idealists see this differently, and instead of listing exactly what they want, they instead list POSSIBILITIES of what they could want, five, ten, fifteen, sixty years from now.
Idealists are typically seen as go-getters, as irrational thinkers, and of course, ever the optimists. Sometimes they lose focus on what should matter because they catch sight of something that COULD matter. I personally am guilty of this, on many different levels. It most oftentimes happens when I get random inspiration from my internet readings and suddenly decide I have to go to the store and get materials for a DIY who-knows-what-caught-my-eye-that-day project. On my way out not only do I forget to lock the door, I also leave my candles burning, and I forget that my boyfriend is en route to my apartment. He arrives while I’m gone, and soon after I get a burst of texts explaining(again) why I can’t leave the door unlocked and why it’s dangerous to leave candles burning unattended. In other words, sometimes my ideals don’t leave room for common sense. The thing is, even though it should, it doesn’t really bother me. I call my boyfriend, apologize for the temporary scare, and then soon forget about it, and do it again a few months(or weeks) down the road. The thing is, idealists don’t really live with the fear of consequences looming over them. Consequences are a thundercloud that hover over the world, and to the average population, the threat of a storm is enough to make them aware of their decisions. But idealists, idealists see this thundercloud, and instead of shying away from it, they huff and puff and blow it all away, and without hesitation continue on their route to the gold at the end of a rainbow only they can see.
I wish I was still in first grade, so when asked what success looks like to me, I could confidently belt out, “I’m going to be a ballerina lifeguard princess!”. I can guarantee that if I stated that at this age, the reaction would NOT be, “Sounds great dear. You can be whatever you want, as long as you put your mind to it”. Dang. I miss first grade. I wish I was still at that point because right now, I’m at the point where I can’t tell you what success means to me. I don’t know the answer. And I don’t think I ever really will. I know that it will get me into trouble, and most likely with more serious consequences than a potential apartment-fire-caused-by-unattended-burning-candle, but there’s absolutely nothing I can do about that. I love my life, and I love the possibilities it brings me. The only thing I can promise you is that in the future my success will still include a hot air balloon(and, of course, the cannon-firing boyfriend).
(Porter)In case it hasn’t been gathered yet, I am the above-mentioned cannon-firing realist boyfriend. Let’s start off with me solemnly promising that I’m not the dream crusher I’m being portrayed as. Like all idealists, my girlfriend is prone to exaggeration and over-imaginative thinking. It’s because idealism sets her loose, it lets her mind float freely amongst the clouds. On the other hand, realism acts as a tether for me. It keeps me grounded, it allows me to keep up with the real world. Like all people, I have dreams and aspirations, but in the end when it comes time to act on them, they’re diluted enough so that they will realistically fit into my life. Would I love to travel the world in a hot air balloon? Of course, who wouldn’t(except for those with acrophobia). However, I know that this is not feasible, and so instead I’ll plan a vacation that includes a hot air balloon ride in it.
Success is always on the horizon for me. I see it, I know what it is, and all I have to do is go after it. However, unlike the horizon, my success is actually a reachable goal. This doesn’t mean that my success doesn’t change as I myself change, it just means that at any point in time I have a pretty good idea of what I want in my life. As a realist, I take what the world has already given me and I make something of it. I don’t focus on the possibility of making something happen, I focus on what NEEDS to happen, what should happen, and I then plan on how I’m going to make it happen. It’s not always as simple as a math equation, there are always unseen variables, but eventually I’m always able to come to some sort of conclusion with my life goals.
Now, I’m not saying that idealists are inferior to realists, but they certainly don’t always think things out as well as they should. They jump out of the nest before they learn how to fly. Even when faced with less than pleasant circumstances, they still charge head-first into the next steps of life. I, on the other hand, make sure I am fully fledged before I start flapping my wings around the nest. Only after I’ve built my strength and mapped out a route do I make my jump. I do what makes sense for me to do. As a realist, I live by what I should do, not what I could do. I don’t see the point in entertaining the thought of whimsical, unrealistic ideas of success when I already have an idea of what I need to do in order to be happy.
Just because I’m a realist doesn’t mean that I lack imagination, it just means that I place a filter over that sector of my brain. I think it, but I never let it become any more than a whisper of a thought. This helps me keep track of the big picture. If I’m making supper(unlikely considering my most complex dish to date is scrambled eggs), and I realize I’ve forgotten an ingredient, I’m going to go out and get it. However, before I do so, I’m going to turn off the oven and all the lights in the house, I’m going to lock the door, and I’m going to text my girlfriend where I’m going and what I’m doing so she doesn’t think I’ve been abducted by aliens(you’d be surprised at the stuff she comes up with). Realists are able to keep a firm grasp on the world around them, and idealists sometimes(actually, often) lose that grip and bounce around in the clouds. Usually it takes getting struck by lightning to bring them crashing down.
I’m happy with my life. I have a great relationship with my family, I have a great job, and school doesn’t entirely suck. Just because I don’t have a glittery rainbow filter over my life doesn’t mean that it’s dry or boring. It means that I don’t let “what ifs” get in the way of what matters most to me. As a realist and a human, I obviously still make mistakes, but the difference between me and an idealist is that I just learn from them a lot quicker. Take this, for example. Once when I was out clothes shopping(a rare sighting) I accidentally lost track of my keys. I didn’t notice until I was out in the parking lot hunting for them in my pocket that I realized I had most likely left them in the store. I panicked, ran back inside, and found them at customer service. Since that day, I have never once lost track of my personal belongings while out and about(unless they were placed in my girlfriend’s possession, of course). On the other hand, when my girlfriend goes out shopping(a common occurrence), there’s a chance out of three that she’s going to either drop her keys or lock them in the car. She’s too wrapped up with the outfit possibilities she’s creating in her mind that she forgets important details in her life like: keys are necessary to drive herself home, and she doesn’t have enough money to support her shopping habit. Fortunately for her, someone always returns her keys to the front desk, and I usually answer my phone so she doesn’t have to wait long until I can bring a screwdriver and a coat hanger to unlock her car. And in her eyes, it all worked out, and that’s all that matters.
Realists are to humanity as gravity is to the earth. We help everything stay where it’s supposed to be. We’re reliably consistent. Realists find the patterns in the world and they follow them. They do what they can to keep the earth in a constant state of motion, and they do it well. This isn’t to say they aren’t innovative or they don’t make their own discoveries, they just do it with a method, and that method always has a pattern. To put it simply, they can make their own pictures, but they always follow their own rules and color inside the lines. Idealists are the ones who create an entire coloring book, and then decide to scribble on the wall. I guess if I were to sum up realists, I would say that we do what we can to keep the world constant, and we do it in ways that we know produce results. Success to us is pretty straight-forward. We have dreams and aspirations, but those dreams and aspirations are always reachable. I get it, idealists make the world a brighter place, but the light wouldn’t matter if it burnt the world down because an idealist was playing with the fire that came with it. The idealists may light the fire, but it’s up to the realists to watch over it.
People may think that two people with such drastically different mindsets may not mix well in a relationship, but we would have to strongly disagree. Our relationship is extraordinarily well-balanced because of it. Thanks to the idealist point-of-view, sometimes our weekends consist of driving up to the beach, but never making it because we had to stop at every flower and vegetable stand along the way. Due to the realist view, days off sometime mean spending the day fixing the idealist’s 3-door Saturn because she forgot about the importance of oil. Or sometimes they’re spent cuddling the day away and watching the Discovery Channel because both of us need a day to rewind, even though one of us pretends like she doesn’t. We think so differently, but yet we can have entire conversations without uttering a word. We dance without music, we laugh without reason, and we love without restraint. I guess we may have never realized it until just now, but our greatest success, whether idealistic or realistic, may just be each other.
Every idealist needs a realist in their life, and every realist needs an idealist. Realists every once in awhile need to be reminded of the possibilities life gives them, and idealists need to have someone remind them that the earth is still there.
One without the other would be no good.
Just as the world needs tethers, it needs a little bit of sunset-orange too.
