Jesus, I friggin’ love Hugh MacLeod.
You know what, Hugh? I’m sick of my great potential. People have been telling me my whole life that I’ve got such great potential, boy, and I’m really going to do wonderful things… one of these days. It’s a narrative that I’ve bought into, too, because it’s a hell of a lot easier to tell that story than to actually produce anything.
I’ve stayed with girlfriends because they had potential and I’ve worked for companies that had a lot of potential and I’ve struggled with projects for far too long because they had such sweet, tantalizing, beautiful potential.
But the fact is that potential doesn’t mean shit. Potential is energy coiled, motion conserved, action delayed. Potential could sit there for the rest of eternity for all it cares, and never move, and that’s what it asks you to ignore.
So Rule #2: Don’t fall in love with potential. Potential hasn’t happened.
I’m tired of my fucking potential. I’m tired of letting potential pass as a substitute for accomplishment. I’m tired of being in the habit of thinking in the future tense; “I will do this;” “I’m going to do that.” God grant me the strength to do, and spare me from making the lame excuse of getting-ready-to-do.
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If, as Linus Pauling said,”Ideas are the shit of creative brains, shed continuously by all creative people,” “potential” has to be the curse of anyone able to cope with institutional education with a better-than-B average!!! Parents, teachers, advisors, mentors, bosses all gazing at you with disappointment when you fail to buy-in to whatever the challenge du jour may be with “But you have so much potential! I know you can do this!”
Well, yes. But why would I want to do whatever … take the sucky litcrit course, work on the doomed-from-the-start project, give up a rare free weekend to “volunteer” for some event for a cause I don’t care about, attend a social function with people who can’t carry a conversation … Ah, the lifetime of guilt trips inflicted by people who expect you to deploy YOUR potential in aid of their agendas!
And the friends who can’t manage to finish their dissertations, novels, remodeling, whatever because they’re paralyzed with fear-of-failing-to-be-fabulous-beyond-belief. They’ve got so much potential they can’t imagine that simply finishing—competently, appropriately, finally—is enough.
Suddenly I recall a scene in “Pride & Prejudice” when Mr. Darcy’s insufferable aunt announces that if she had ever learned to play the piano, of course she would be flawless.
Me, I’m working on finishing my backlog of projects a little bit every day. I’ll be damned if I leave a closetful of quilts-in-progress or a file drawer full of outlines or text snippets!
Or, at least, CAN be enough. Yes—yes—YES! Preach it, sister!