a practical turn of mind

[gurdonark]

Perhaps pragmatism provides me with a tragic flaw. Lately I focus on the "I can't" syndrome. I suffered from this syndrome in my own life a great deal more in the past than I do now. When my first home was worth less than I owed on it, I "couldn't" sell it at a loss and make a career change I contemplated. Even today "I can't" be more organized, and "I can't" seem to get my "to do" list cleared.

"I can't" thinking has its place, of course. Sometimes "I can't" is shorthand for "I considered many possibilities for changes in my life, added the pluses and minuses, and that's just not right for me". But in my own case, "I can't" served as a knee jerk reaction to various dilemmae, in which I felt trapped.

I'm intrigued with the notion that the mere mental attitude one brings to a problem colors one's ability to solve a problem. I also find that desperation, more than even mere necessity, tends to be not only the mother of invention, but also an effective solution to melt "I can't" thinking.

I like the books about living simply, but sometimes I think that living fearlessly matters a good bit more. I don't mean that fearlessness which arises from taking life-threatening physical risks, as that is a more extreme kind of courage than I am discussing here. I speak about the kind of courage to recognize that every choice involves pleasure and pain, and one must choose according to what one truly wants to try.

I know a woman who is a fine actress. She's never had more than a cameo role on a TV series, a commercial, or a bit part in an indie film, when it comes to "material success". She instead plays in little Equity Waiver theaters, where her performances usually gain stellar reviews in the local alternatives. She moved from the inland valleys to coastal California, took out student debt to get an MFA in theater, and works a day job having nothing to do with theater. She had the intelligence and chops to choose any of a dozen more lucrative and less subordinate jobs, but she wants to act.
Although she "can't" make it big, I always thought she has a better life being what she wishes to be than if she had gotten an MBA and never given it a try.

Perhaps paradoxically, though, I think that it was much easier for her to get to "I can", even though she has an "impossible dream". Some people feel a pull to a particular career or way of life--"I am an actress. I am an artist". In my circles, engineers tend to be born, not made.
Indeed, when one finds an engineer who did not have the work discipline to get the engineering degree, it's always interesting. Some become techs or repair people--but some are just plain odd, engineers without portfolios. They sell retail electronics, and talk about things they wish, but they lack the math discipline, to know.

But I've always classed myself in the broad group of people who do not have one particular call to one particular field of work. I loved law school, and I made a good lawyer, but it is not my ruling passion. I do not believe I have a vocational ruling passion. I could work in any of a dozen careers, with equal "good but not my whole life" results.

Some people feel called, as if to a ministry. But I always felt that I never had one specific call to one specific thing. This can seem like a vice--I remember in college, feeling that I had no real direction to do things. But it also has a virtue, because one can be so adaptable this way, like one of those wrenches which can be adjusted to turn a thousand different bolts. I pick any of three dozen careers within the limits of my skill set, and could have achieved a workable life in each of them. But this way of being requires a different discipline than the "Climb Ev'ry Mountain" approach that a person with One True Vocation faces. When one knows one could do "anything", one is tempted to just roll along and in essence do "nothing". After all, if I had a vocation, that would be one thing, but without one, I "can't" be bothered.

But my flaw of pragmatism tells me that I still use "I can't" sometimes as a shorthand for "I don't want to change or take risks". Lately I try to use "I won't" more often then "I can't". I try, whenever possible, to point out that I choose not to do things, rather than to imply that I am unable to do things. I think there is great power in "I won't" and "I will", because I have the control of choice in those phrases, whereas "I can't" suggests I am merely a prisoner of my outlook and circumstances.

I think that trying to avoid risk and change is one of those impossible efforts. Life ends, at least on this plane of existence. People wither, and change, and suffer chance and mischance. Risk and change are inevitable. I like the image of the person who saves his or her retirement money in a savings account, because it is FDIC insured. That person "can't" take the risk of potential losses in the stock market. But that person takes an altogether different risk--the risk that inflation will eat away the value of the principal, rendering retirement materially worse than a more moderate approach would have rendered it. A world of people avoid risk in such matters in their minds, but actually take far greater risks than they realize.

They say a person with substance abuse problems has to "hit bottom" before he or she can make a change. But I like to think that one need not "hit bottom" to change one's outlook from "I can't" to "I can". I do not accept the notion that if one merely says "I can", the universe then becomes a co-conspirator in making one prosperous and whole. But I do believe that changing one's thinking is the first step in changing one's life.

On a different note, I think when one lacks a "call" to do something (and I note, with interest, that non-theistic people experience metaphoric "calls" as well as do theistic folk), one is not merely imprisoned in ennui, but also liberated from compulsion. If one need not be an actor, say, or a doctor,then one can say "what work atmosphere would I have?", "how much could I avoid being under others' thumbs", "what geographic mobility could I have?" and "could I make a bit more money?". Work becomes less a priesthood than a congenial way to spend one's day. I am not saying that one does not work hard--if I have a career fault, it is of the workaholic kind. But the pressure is off--I don't need to publish a novel, or achieve a particular degree, to
find a livable life.

Sometimes my heart aches when I see people trapped in "I can't" and "I am without direction" thinking. I have been trapped in that kind of thinking myself. In some ways I am still trapped in those notions. But my belief is that one hs to ignore that feeling of "I can't" and just do. It's a bit like the silly line from the song in the musical--"when I fool the people I fear I fool myself as well", only I don't like fooling anyone.

The cards get dealt unevenly and unfairly. One gets the "great artist" card, with its compensations and huge penalties. Another gets the "great charismatic business card", with its guarantees of worldly success. Still another gets "can sell anything", "spiritual leader" or "born to teach". Most of us, I suspect, get the "could do a lot of things, within a limited band of skills" cards. But whatever cards one gets, one has to play the hand.

I meet brilliant, lovable, capable people who mire themselves in traps of their own making. I wish I could release them from the traps, but woodlands mystic and trap-liberator are not among my cards. But I have this joker in my hand, and it grins at me, and it says "if they just go do, they will succeed, or they will fail, but they will truly live". My pragmatic flaw is that I wish to give folks in the trap a gift. It's a booklet--a very short tome. It says "just go do, as if it mattered". Go get that education.
Go take that risk. Go plan for that comfortable home, the potential kids, the loving pets. Go make friends, and read books, and work as if work mattered. It's a curious thing, but although it all counts for nothing, it all counts.

Comments

[gregwest98.livejournal.com]

Better to try and fail than never to try at all, eh?

[marstokyo.livejournal.com]

In grade school we had these excercise books called *Think and Do*-- I always thought the problem with them is that some people *think* and some people *do* -- but rarely do people *think AND do*--- so many people get mired down in *thinking* they never get to the *doing* part. Is it better to think, than do? Or better to do, than think? Some would argue you must think before you can do. But I say it's better to do, and think WHILE you're doing, thus accomplishing both at once.

Words of Power

[ranunculus.livejournal.com]

On Saturday I was thinking of the power of words. Emotionally I was doing all right - except when I had to say the words "My Uncle is Dead". Then I inevitably burst into tears. Not that that is bad, it just was. The words, (thinking them, but much more powerfully, saying them) packed an enormous emotional impact.

I've been using the power of words to effect me positively for the last two years. Instead of saying "ok" or "still standing" when people ask how I am I reply "Great" or "Fabulous" or even "Beautiful". Saying those words gives me a lift every time. Even my posture is better.

You mention hitting bottom. I believe we all have to "hit bottom" in some way, in order to begin the process of change. After all, change is fundamentally frightening. When I was begining my own metamorphisis, long ago, my therapist suggested that most of our behaviours, those things that we do, or don't do, were learned as a coping stratagy at some point in our lives. The problem lies in learning how and when to break with our training. The stratagy that was perfect for a 5 year old isn't suitable at all for an adult. But I am still terrified of rattle-snakes, legacy of my mother attempting to keep her child safe in an area rife with snakes. Breaking "don'ts" or "can'ts" can be a terribly frightening experience. I watch a dear friend of mine struggle with manic depression. He insists that he is "chemically inballanced" which indeed he may be. But drugs don't work very well with him, and I know how long he has refused to look at the scary monsters in his past. I think that people who cope well, who manage to sweep aside the "don'ts and can'ts" from their lives, are people who learn to "bottom out" further and further up the pit walls. In some way they have been taught that the "monster" can be overcome, and they trust themselves to make that decision.

Ok I'll stop rambling now!

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

Do you remember Alvin? The fellow from the physics department who had every characteristic of a physicist other than the ability to do physics? I always thought he was the definition of noble. He worked to become someone he dreamed of being, even though he lacked the gifts.

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

I think that's it. I think one has to "do" and the thinking just naturally arises. thinking alone is some kind of personal hex, without the doing. there's some faith/works parallel there, but it's beyond me.

Re: Words of Power

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

Thanks for such a thoughtful and insightful comment. I think words do have a power, and a fluidity, and that's why I am always in favor of English literature majors :). Maybe the "bottom" need not be the "rock bottom", but maybe the "rock bottom" is the genesis of change. Run the maze until one hits the wall :). Then run someplace else.

Re: Words of Power

[ranunculus.livejournal.com]

I guess what I was trying to suggest at the end is that once we face up to our fears, and understand why we are reacting the way we do, we can begin to move "rock bottom" up to about three inches from the top!

Speaking of words, my partner Donald and I decided that we were compatable when we realized that we both owned unabridged dictionarys - though his was better, the two volume OED.

[taebopper.livejournal.com]

Faith without works is dead. You can have all the faith in the world about something, but until you act upon it, you're not going to get anything.

[gregwest98.livejournal.com]

I guess I conclude that, in some cases, one should try, then fail, then pick something else. The cycle could repeat indefinitely.

try is another name for fail

[amatrixangel.livejournal.com]

'Do or do not
There is no try'

- Yoda wise words ;)

say I can rather than I can't then over and over then see

[amatrixangel.livejournal.com]

noooooooo. no no no no no... no.

Everything you think is your life. Every-thing.

It's no different to what Walsch said. God is a Xerox machine.

Nothing happens different to what you think happens, what you believe happens - or will happen - in your life.

What do you want to happen? Where you are now is every-thing that you have ever thought.

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

Although the Book of James does not always move me that much, the line "faith without works is dead" always resonates with me.

Re: Words of Power

[jackiemae.livejournal.com]

"Run the maze until one hits the wall :). Then run someplace else."

I love that. I'm going to add it to my quote collection. Shall I put your name after it or someone else's?