Clarity

I’ve been having some moments of clarity recently. Now, you know I don’t blog personal much. It doesn’t fit my career – or personality – to be splendidly bold and dramatically confessional like some of the bloggers who fascinate me. But even so, for anyone who writes, it’s part of the rhythm of your blood. If you can’t write it down, you can’t think fully. So in that way I’m similar to my more avowedly public compatriots. And so, sometimes, I just can’t help it.

I’m a bit of a daydreamer. This can be lovely, but it can also separate you from your reality. Thinking, not being. And all too often I wish for impossibilities: for me to be other than I am, and for people to be other than they are. (I’d say “better” instead of “other”, but while it might feel that way, it isn’t always. Not really.) The thing is, the wishing doesn’t change anything – not myself or anyone else.

Now, here’s the clarity. What I’m finally figuring out, slowly, so slowly – is that I wouldn’t actually want it to. The line from one of my favorite movies finally makes sense: “If I ever go looking for my heart’s desire again, I won’t look any further than my own backyard, because if it isn’t there, I never really lost it to begin with.”

If only I could have the moments of clarity without the years of whinging. (Have I mentioned that I can be impatient?)

Here’s your geek link: Barry Schwarz explained at TED how society’s overabundance of choice make us miserable. We end up paralyzed with indecision and full of regret and unreachable expectations. He ends his talk by explaining why “everybody needs a fishbowl”. The metaphor is perfect: when you insist on keeping an entire universe of possibilities open at all times – you aren’t keeping anything. You leave yourself nothing. There’s much to ponder in that.

So my clarity is this: I’m devoutly grateful for not having ended up in some of the situations I’d thought I wanted. For having focused. For having decided some things. And I’m looking forward to where this particular road takes me.