Choose to Take the Journey

Let’s say… you’re a writer.  You’ve done a lot of reading, but you’ve never come across the book you want to write.  There’s a unique emptiness out there that needs to be filled.  You know you have the talent, the intellect, the creativity to fill this emptiness.  You also secretly fear that if you don’t fill it, eventually someone else will.  And yet, you idle.

Or say, you’re an artist.  You want to express yourself.  To be seen.  To not just exist, but to matter.  You’ve found your medium through which to reach out and connect to the world.  You want to leave your mark.  Still, you procrastinate.

Or, you’re a lion in a cat cage.  You hate your day job.  You feel like a cog in a machine, but even as a cog, you’ve outgrown this machine.  This system.  This devilish contraption to which you are strapped from 9 to 5.  You’re self-aware.  You even know how to get out, but you don’t.

At some point you were motivated.  Ambitious. Proud.  But the weight of age, of responsibilities, of duties and expectations have made you anxious, fearful, and desperate for escape.

So you find your YouTube.  Your Facebook.  Your alcohol, or drugs, or food.  Your video games, comic books, and porn.  Your Netflix.  You’re uncomfortable and you just want to feel better.  You deserve reprieve–at least today.  But somehow, you still feel anxious.  That’s how it starts.

In order to feel better, you have to chase bigger highs: harder booze, fattier foods, kinkier porn.  You’ve entered the Vortex–a vicious cycle of procrastination, self-doubt, and instant gratification.

All of a sudden, everything seems hard and getting harder.  Even small goals seem big and the hugeness of your dream seems insurmountable.  You ask yourself: Was it really so sudden?

The septic tank didn’t overflow because of a single moment, did it?  It filled bit by bit and day by day.  The calendar page flipped and you cried a little.  Maybe not outwardly, but on the inside.

Stop.  Hang on a second.  I’m just speaking hypothetically.  There’s actually nothing wrong with letting loose from time to time.  But if I struck a nerve, then you too have known the Vortex.  I know because I was there–earlier today.  And yesterday.  In fact, I’ve lost count how many times I’ve succumbed to it.

That’s because the brain is lazy.  Instead of confronting what it should do, the brain tries to seduce you with what you could do.  Stimulation.  Titillation.  Stupefication.  There is a way out:

Read.

When you read, it puts your mind in the mental state of the writer at the time he wrote–usually his better, higher mental state.  You’ve been there before, haven’t you?  You were hopeful.  Enthusiastic.  You would do or try anything.  And just like that, problems shrunk, and your dream became attainable again.  You escaped the Vortex.

But tomorrow, the pull of the Vortex begins anew.  So you will read some more, won’t you?