I have for part of my life dreamt of fame — I was a teenager, mentally not doing great, and thought rockstars were the coolest thing you could be. If born and raised in some other place than one where alcohol and promiscuity were the main occupation of people that age, I might have channeled this desire to burn guitars and roll on stage into playing with a band and maybe kept playing an instrument into my adult years, instead than dropping it when I felt being palatable was more important. If I had done all of this, maybe my talent would have not just guided me, but forced me into fame. Hear the screams of the crowd?
I would now be dead, or in the best case scenario not writing these posts. I realized, soon enough, that that grandiosity was replacing other, more authentic self-esteem, and was something that needed healing, not encouragement.
People become famous accidentally, when doing something they love, or they plan this greatness and pursue it obsessively. In the first case they often regret that fame, in the second they become addicted. Is this data I found somewhere? No, these are my conjectures.
Similarly, other people might become very successful in what they do (thanks to talent, dedication and luck), and end up gaining enormous power (thanks to systems that barely tax who has a lot). For them that fame and power end up engulfing all other purposes: they become the purpose itself.
I had a conversation with a friend the other day (if you’re reading this, thanks: this was a lesson for me). She was doubting being enough, after having collected greatness for most of her life — this second part I’m adding, she was not so pretentious. She questioned her ability to reach a certain top. Tops are relative, they are just mountains we set to climb.
I told her that, maybe, that was a good thing — I prefaced this with a beloved sentence of mine: “I’ll say something controversial”. That we strive for greatness, fixate on a mountain, to the point of forgetting everything else, including how much we really care about that mountain in the first place.
What if greatness was a trap? I am convinced it would be for me. I am (very) good at what I do. The things I’ve just started I’m less good at, the ones I have experience in I am much better at, but mostly I recognize I have talent: a moderate amount in some areas. I recognize I like to get better at things and I have personal and smart ways to do that, mostly linked to who I am and what I like. And it’s not that I get no joy out of feeding into my strengths, there’s something naturally empowering about it. I like to keep practicing, I like to move forward, I think humans need a certain amount of stepping up on a ladder to somewhere higher, better, more nuanced.
Expertise is about nuances. The more you know, the more you see. Who wouldn’t want that? Only someone who’s choosing to spend their time elsewhere.
Thank God I’m good and not great. Let me aspire to better without ever reaching top. Let me look at it as a nice view, something that gives me direction and makes me eager for knowing tomorrow something I don’t know today.
But please, don’t give me greatness (at this point this sounds like a prayer, I don’t know who I am asking this to but if anyone’s listening you can treat these as wishes I’d like to fulfill) because I’ll become a victim of my own potential.
My friend is afraid of not being chosen, and although I hope she will be, I also think it’ll be a curse. Being chosen makes you feel like you have to respond. And say “Yes”. Enthusiastically. With a big smile and a lot of intentions to confirm the validity of that choice.
There’s a lot of people on the internet who are locking in at the moment, waking up at 4 and not letting anyone or anything distract them from their goal. And I’ll never tell anyone who was born with nothing that it doesn’t make sense to want to be great, because greatness is quite practical: it pays the bills.
But.
To all the rest, who had good and made it great because their talent enslaved them, let me be controversial for a second: I’d never want my talent to distract me from my life. From the mediocrity of reading a book without thinking about how many pages that was or how many books I read this month, to sucking at something, to loving someone who doesn’t love me back, to being genuinely proud of having climbed a hill, even a Dutch one.
I’ll keep watering the pot with my talent and have thousands of goals that I’ll abandon or pursue, but I see my calling a lot like a romantic relationship: it can take a lot of space in my life, but I need my friends too — even more. I’m a huge fan of honeymoon phases, but at some point I need to go back to my books,
my friends,
my movies,
my courses,
my job,
my other job,
my other job,
my walks,
my travel,
my home,
my cat,
my cat,
my other cat,
my music,
my podcasts,
my food,
my mat,
my mind,
my body…
Empatherapy 