In pain

[Julie]

 

Just ask yourself, would you really be any happier, if your day-dreams came true? Wouldn't you be surprised, lost, embarrased? Wouldn't you ask yourself: what made me so special that I achieved all this without effort? Wouldn't you feel guilty that all the success / eternal love / super adventures / super powers came at once? Wouldn't you feel pressure? How would you handle this? And do you really deserve this? What makes you a better candidate than the others, working in the same direction?

 

Maybe, I'm a total workacholic but I just realized, I wouldn't be any happier, if my past day-dreams came true. If one day I wake up as a chess mastermind, a supreme strategist and a friend of known public figures, I would be lost, embarrased and terribly guilty because I didn't do enough to get this. And as I didn't do enough to get this, this is out of my control, this success can disappear tomorrow. What would I do then?

 

I just looked back, and all the achievements came in pain. Maybe, some didn't, but I don't treat them as achievements. Everything coming without effort is out of our control. It's just luck, and you can't control luck.

 

So, why then we want to achieve so much without pain?

 

 

Finishing with two stories, which changed my life :)

 

MUSIC

From Barry Miles "Pink Floyd. The early years". Before 1968 Pink Floyd was centered around one man, Syd Barrett, the genius behind British psychedelia. A talented man creates in pain, a genius steals from God, you would say. Without Barrett there will be no Pink Floyd but you can't steal from God all the time, there is always a price to pay. So, without going into details, after approximately two years the band lost its leader and was in the middle of nowhere as Barrett was the one with charisma and the song-writer. The producer is coming and saying: "So, this is over". Pink Floyd is depressed and one of the members says: "What do you mean by over? Aren't we worth anything?". "Well, actually, no", the producer replies. The guy, who asked the question, was the worst musician in the band, so tone-death that he couldn't even tune his guitar. He wrote a few songs, only one of them was published and it is often called the weakest song on Floyd's debut album. He had limited voice capacity. He wasn't a pleasant person. He wasn't even handsome (saying politely). He didn't have a vision for the band. But something made him ask: "Aren't we worth anything?" Brilliant texts, conceptual ideas and all of this kind came years later as a result of work and experience. You may say that Roger Waters destroyed great Pink Floyd in 80s but you have to agree that without him in 70s there wouldn't be much to destroy in 80s.

 

SPORT

In winter Olympics you can get two individual medals in ski jumping. In 2002, a Swiss called Simon Ammann appeared from no-where and got both golds. Not completely from nowhere but he didn't have any major achievements before. Even his parents didn't watch the jumps on TV, milking cows somewhere in Swiss mountains.  "Luck", "appropriate wind", "luck", "lack of pressure", "luck", "magic"... Then there go cover pages, David Letterman show, Shakira kissing on German show and so on. Plus two words "luck" and "magic". And here comes the reality - Herr Ammann couldn't repeat his success from Salt Lake City Olympics. So, yes, it was luck and magic. 2003-2006 were boring, a lot of training and no results, no luch and no magic. Then failing on 2006 Olympics. After 2006 slow, gradual improvement started. In 2010 Ammann came to Vancouver and got two more individual golds with confidence. 4 individual golds for the first time in ski jumping history. Winning with so great confidence and length superiority than even Poles (two silvers) couldn't complain.

 

 

[Julie]

Yes, always like playing chess and creating strategies. On this site I was surprised to find, how many people have dreams about emotional attachment, mine were always purely intellectual. I guess, I'm doing a bit of (marketing) strategies at work but definitely not as much as I'd like to. But it's a matter of time, I guess.

And I agree that if we're losing the "journey" part, we can't value enough, when arriving at destination point. For sure, we all need to dream and visualize the end effect to feel motivated but it becomes dangerous, when we start preffering easy to achieve illusion to hard to achieve imperfect real things.

[Delorean Jones]

I really dig that Pink Floyd story!

So is being a chess mastermind one of your higher ambitions?

Strategist... intriguing career path.

 

Haha why? Cause we're lazy :p and we want the physical world to match our ideal inner fantasies with as little effort as possible.

I think... when it does happen just like that, we are left wanting something more though. The whole learning process is a beautiful and life affirming journey, I do agree if we skip on that we're only getting like... half (or less) of what we think we're getting.

It's good to be reminded that hard work has a purpose!