In Other Words

Numbered days

It just turned Sunday a little more then five minutes ago. The newest a day can get, in a way. Or at least, that’s how we decided to divide things. So what is there to tell about the last few days? Well I did get some work surveying people for the surveying place that I told you about. Not that bad, the hours go past pretty quickly while I’m there and the pay is good. Not enough hours yet, unfortunately. That is the problem with being paid per hour, you need to work the hours to get the money.

For the rest a few things got cancelled. No squash, no roleplaying. Not much of anything, really. Getting very good at sitting at home and doing nothing. Haven’t even really continued writing on my second short story. I’m about five pages in and not really ready to go on yet. Maybe I am now, but I wasn’t for a few days there.

Any great insights? Time moves faster and faster and goes by quicker and quicker. In a way we find that we actually get trained by society to take less notice of the individual moments and experience less in every day. We learn to grow more content with less happening. That’s actually kind of scaring me these last couple of days. What if I learn to be content with the little I’ve achieved. I’m starting to become afraid that I’ll settle for less then my full potential.

I guess that as long as the fear sticks around I have nothing to worry about. It’s like that saying about guilt. ‘As long as you feel guilty, you have nothing to worry about. It’s the moment you stop feeling guilty that you have to start worrying.’ Ambition is probably something similar, but then to do with having or losing the fear of not succeeding.

Success and ambition are irrevocably intertwined. Yes, you can have success without ambition, and ambition without success. The first is hard, and the second is terribly frustrating. Yet they come together more often than not, really.

I’m spending a lot of time talking about success aren’t I? Is that starting to bore people? Or get on their nerves in other ways? Making them think about what they haven’t and possibly wont achieve in their own lives? I imagine it must be very difficult to hear about another person’s plans when you’ve given up on your own. I wonder how it feels to realise that that is exactly what you’ve done? I always say I want to experience as much in my life as possible, but I’m not sure I want to experience that.

But then it is in the nature of personal growth that that doesn’t really happen, right? As long as you keep trying to improve yourself you have not really given up on your ambition.

This last year, without me really realising it, has been filled with me understanding and coming to grips with my own mortality. The realisation that I will probably be dead in fifty or sixty years time and I’ve only got about another 25 to achieve what I want. Not many people still manage to fulfill their dreams after the age of fifty, or so.

Inevitably, though, it is that very realisation of mortality that drives us to succeed. If we had longer than we have we would probably take a lot longer to do what we wanted to do. I wonder if we would think more long term if we lived more long term? Probably. We probably wouldn’t have made it as far as we did in the time we had had. Or maybe we would have. Maybe we would have wasted less time making bad spur of the moment decisions.

I can’t help but wonder, would immortals have ambition?

posted by Symbol @ 15.5.05