Why Am I Here?

Not the really big "Why am I here?" question, but rather why am I here on this blog? There are many possible answers: a place to be heard, a creative outlet, doing it for a friend, and a host of other reasons why people probably blog. Mine is none of these. Mine is simple and rather selfish, but here and now I commit, to whomever might read these posts, that above all I will be honest, starting with what motivates my participation here.

I have a dream. A few of them actually. But I'm NOT chasing them. I'm not chasing them and I don't really understand why. So while I am in fact contributing in some way to the social discourse on chasing dreams, I'm really here as a means to explore and understand my own shortcomings, ultimately searching for what I'm missing that's keeping me from the chase. As far as I know, at this point this blog is just a conversation between myself and Bryan, but even if that's all it ever is, that's enough for me. My hope is that others will join, will offer feedback or support or criticism or analysis, but if the only comments that ever appear are from Bryan alone, it's enough for me.

I'm not quite ready to profess exactly what my dreams are at this point, but I'll offer where my thinking has roamed about my failure to chase them. First, my dreams are not trivial to me. If they were shallow, selfish dreams, then I suppose I wouldn't care. But, to me at least---you will have to judge for yourself once I eventually write about them---these dreams are not shallow nor selfish, and involve things that go to the core of my values. So it would certainly seem I'm not complacent because my dreams have little or no value to me.

Maybe I'm just lazy. This was a particularly difficult thing to consider, but consider it I have and deeply. My own conclusion is that I do in fact have a lazy streak. For much of my life and in many things, I've succeeded not on effort but on ability, settling for results achieved not by persistent hard work but rather what I was naturally capable of. Please do not think I am bragging here, I am not. I humbly recognize those capabilities as gifts, they were bestowed upon me, I did not earn them. The point is that a certain level of natural ability has allowed me the luxury of laziness in many things where I still managed to be successful by most anyone's definition. When I realized this it was hard to accept. There were areas of my life where I wasn't truly giving it my best, where I was being a minimalist because I could. But here's the thing: not with anything important to me. The important things I have focused on, have given the effort to, and can truly look back and say with honesty that I gave them my best. So while I've been lazy with certain things because nothing minimal effort was required to achieve acceptable results, something that shames me and that I strive to change, for things that have been important to me, I have given incredible efforts and hard work, and was never satisfied with merely what was acceptable. I strove to achieve the best result possible. When it comes to my dreams, they are things of utmost importance, born from my very core, sacred and set apart. The pattern of laziness I see in my life does not then apply. The chasing of these dreams should be some of the things I'm willing to give more effort to than anything else in the world. This raises the question, of course, that perhaps my dreams are not as important to me as I believe them to be, but no introspection is even required to put that thought to immediate rest. There is perhaps nothing more important to me at this point, so I have to believe that, though ashamed of the lazy streak I appear to have in some cases, here it does not apply.

So, concluding that my dreams are not shallow or selfish, and are in fact of utmost importance to me, and that I've never been lazy in pursuing the things that have really mattered to me, I have to look elsewhere. One stark possibility is complacency. While my job may not be ideal, neither is it unbearable, and financially most people would consider me successful. I have worked hard to allow myself and my family to live comfortably, but perhaps that's precisely the problem: I'm too comfortable. I believe it's important that I earned my position in life rather than having had it given to me, but even having earned it, I've come to believe comfort is a dangerous enemy to a chaser of dreams. In researching this idea, I came across the following quotes:

Don't get too comfortable with who you are at any given time, you may miss the opportunity to become who you want to be. --Jon Bon Jovi

There are risks and costs to action. But they are far less than the long range risks of comfortable inaction. --John F. Kennedy

I respect these men, and I respect their insights. Both paint comfort as an enemy of desire and achievement, Bon Jovi on a personal level, Kennedy apparently on a social level.

The question I have thus arrived at is this: Is a comfortable life my modern day lotus flower? And if it is, how do I break free of such a shameful state? Just recognizing it doesn't appear sufficient. I need a plan of action, but despite all I know, all I believe, all I hold important, one has not materialized. I almost feel like a drug addict in need of an intervention. The addict reasons that he is not an addict by virtue of his belief that he can quit at any time, when in reality few addicts can break free on their own. Am I addicted, believing that I can start chasing my dream at any time, but am in reality beholden to the safety of comfort? Pondering these questions is where I find myself lately, wondering what, if anything, can break the hold...