”In the Footsteps of the Few - The Power of a Principled Life” - Part One

"In the Footsteps of the Few - The Power of a Principled Life"

What I Want - The Frightening Call of Great Things

I want to be happy, but I don’t think I want to be satisfied; for satisfaction lures me into believing that happiness is found in reaching some point rather than realizing happiness is born of striving for those points.  I want to experience a resilient and wonderfully endearing sense of contentment that neatly threads itself through every part of my soul, but I don’t want that contentment to morph into the baser mentality of complacency.  I want to keep a weathered eye on every horizon, but I want to do more than just watch those horizons from some sorry distance.  Rather, I want to walk their ridges.  I don’t want to contemplate the taking of a journey.  Rather, I want to be contemplating a journey as I’m taking it.

I want to robustly celebrate the achievements and vigorously revel in the milestones in a manner completely worthy of them, but I never want to fall to the bane of mediocrity that would prompt me to see them as a terminus.  I want to develop a sturdy confidence born of the advances made, and I want to have that confidence perpetually reinforced by the successes achieved.  Yet, I pray that my failures will always serve to temper that confidence so that it never turns to rot in the form of arrogance.  And in further managing this tempered confidence, I never want it to be so strong that I errantly assume any challenge as too small to be worthy of my time.  I want to be happy, but I don’t think I want to be satisfied. 

For whatever reason I might do it and in whatever way I might do it, I never want to hand myself excuses to round the next summit instead of scaling it.  I never want to slothfully presume the ability to achieve a goal without holding myself accountable to actually getting on the track and running the race.  And I suppose worst of all, I never want to scan my assorted array of trophies, whether they be numerous or few, and in the scanning embrace some languid sense born of complacency that somehow it is done and that I can hang up my hat, when in reality life is never done and no hat is really ever hung.

 

Why Do I ‘Never Want’ to Do These Things?

Laziness is humanity domesticated to its own destruction.  Mediocrity is life pent up in the very iron-clad cages that we create out of the misguided notion that an ‘adventure’ is a product of those misty-eyed idealists who expend their lives chasing dreams too elusive to catch.  Therefore, we create dreams that we can cage so that they simply can’t elude us, and in their captivity we can manage them so that, God forbid, they never manage us.  And what we forget is that a dream caged is nothing more than an anemic, pasty-white wish that is always in the process of dying in whatever cage it happens to find itself.

 

We Are Made for More

We are made for more than all of that.  Our humanity yearns for the next adventure.  We desire lofty summits and distant finish lines that tax the whole of our energies in order to get us to them.  There is inherent within us this incessant sense that where ‘we are’ is not where ‘we’re going,’ and that to park it wherever we’re at is to start dying in that very place.  There is some fixed notion in our psyche and some insistent voice in our souls that will not be silenced and cannot be appeased by lesser agendas.  These call out despite the many ways we work to silence them, and in the calling out they call us out.

Sadly, in light of the calling, we too often surrender to fear and we sell-out to apathy.  We foolishly peddle our resources and pawn off our talents to lesser things so that we can hold up some small, pithy achievement to offset the gnawing guilt we experience over bypassing the greater achievements that were our calling before we were called away.  We can’t show up empty-handed, for that would work against our efforts to squelch the already suppressed voice of passion.  Yet, unless we set our sights on higher things we will always be empty-hearted, for blind obedience to fear and the steady ingestion of apathy leaves everything it touches empty.  And I would propose that emptiness of this sort is the bedfellow of death itself.

Therefore, we achieve something because we must.  And at times we dress up those ‘somethings’ so that they don’t look half bad.  But too often our achievements are an insidious effort to sedate our sense of passion and render it appeased.  They’re the anemic manifestation of our fears, a groveling by-product of our lackluster vision, and a response to the snide voice of mediocrity that herald’s ‘passion’ as the fool’s errand. 

Passion is not fooled, even though we are fooled by the belief that we somehow fooled it.  To numb passion is not to diminish its power.  Rather, it is to diminish our sense of its power.  In doing so we stepped down instead of stepping up.  We swapped mountains for back alleys, and dramatic vistas for fading fences.  And these realities create a grinding angst within us that will not be soothed by anything but heeding the call from which we’ve run.

 

What to Do?

Decide to Do Something

As obvious as it may sound, the first thing to do is decide to do something.  Without the decision to do something, anything and everything is only an idea.  An idea, regardless of how ingenious or bold changes nothing until it is birthed as a reality.  The greatest ideas will only tickle our imagination, but they won’t fire it until they’re released.  They will nudge us, but they won’t force us to jump.  They will call, but they won’t beg.

To do something is to decide to be disciplined.  It’s a decision to take a step rather than toy with ideas.  It is a choice to move from the non-committal ease of playing out various scenarios in our head, to grabbing one of them by the throat and acting on it.  It is not based on cost in stepping out, for the greatest cost of all is in not stepping out.  And it is the sad reality that most of our ideas die without ever having been birthed as realities because we choose to do everything but step.

 

Decide If You’re Going to be Brave

An idea as only an ‘idea’ and nothing more than an idea is safe.  As ideas and ideas only, they’re manageable.  They’re domesticated.  They’re leashed.  We hold them within the safe confines of our minds and our imaginations, toying with them as time permits and returning them to those confines when it does not.  But cut the reigns and turn an idea loose and it may not be as manageable and domesticated as we might like it to be.  So, are we brave enough for the ride that is certain to ensue?

An idea that is given legs is one of the most dangerous things imaginable, but it is also one of the most exciting things possible.  An idea running at full stride is wildly frightening in a manner that unleashes something that was never supposed to be leashed.  It is not about throwing caution to the wind as some might think.  Rather, it’s about stepping into the wind and being swept up by it while wisely holding caution as we do.  It’s about understanding that wisdom is not held hostage to safety.  Rather, wisdom is based on figuring out how we navigate dangerous things in a way that no longer renders them dangerous.  And as such, are we going to choose to be brave?

 

Decide How Important Comfort and Familiarity Are

Unleash your ideas and things will never be the same; guaranteed.  Things will change when great ideas are unleashed because they can’t help but change.  What ‘is’ will become the stuff of a history that will lay beyond our ability to ever reclaim again.  Our ideas are the stuff of the future.  They are never home in the present for the present is only the thing that launches them, not the thing that cultivates them.  If our lives have been expended in the acquisition of comfort and the cultivation of familiarity, our future is our ‘now’ and no idea can sufficiently grow in that.

While the degree of success rests on the magnitude of the idea being released, the greater degree to which it will be successful is the degree to which we unleash it.  And if we prefer familiarity and the comfort that it engenders, we might never truly let an idea loose, or we may well attempt to cram it back into the confines we released it from after we’ve unleashed it.  At best, the ideas are hamstrung.  At worst, they perish.   

 

Get the Resources

If you’ve decided that you want to do something, if you’re sufficiently brave to do it, and if you’re willing to forgo familiarity and comfort in the pursuit of it, then get the resources that you need to make it happen.  Real resources.  This is not about thin and pasty resources, nor is it about material that’s been worn thin.  It’s not about sugary-sweet notions or trite sayings that are fun and fanciful but are shallow and porous. 

Rather, this is about finding bold, honest, timely, daring, frank, deep and brisk material that will thrust you out beyond the confines you saw as the terminus of your dreams.  Find resources that are unforgiving in helping you grow, reliable in content, proven in substance, and thick with wisdom.  Learn from trusted people who have been there-and-back who have likewise taken other people there-and-back.  Grab these resources, let them grab you, and then rigorously apply them without delay or excuse.  When you do, you will start the process of placing yourself in a position to begin heeding the call of great things.