Because I spent the year after my freshman year “reconsidering [my] educational objectives” at the behest of the university administration, I was a year older than my new classmates, and in that year had had experiences that opened up eyes and mind considerably.\u00a0 Details not important in this post.\u00a0 One evening after dinner, five or six of us were sitting around having a sophomoric discussion that focused (as one does at times) on “what I want in life.”\u00a0\u00a0 Someone spoke up with “What do you want MOST?” and the answers poured out:\u00a0 a doctorate, to be a professor, travel the world, happily married, a specific number of children, live in the city\/live in the country.\u00a0\u00a0 I sat there increasingly feeling (as I often did) out of phase with the rest.\u00a0\u00a0 I wanted, in a general way, lots of things, some of them things mentioned for others as their “most wanted” thing.\u00a0 But I couldn’t name what I really wanted most.<\/p>\n
Back in my room later, finished with the night’s study assignments, I was still feeling my way to the answer for that question.\u00a0\u00a0 Horses?\u00a0 Yes, I wanted horses, but not “most.”\u00a0\u00a0 Graduate school?\u00a0 Yes, I wanted more education but no specific degree satisfied “most.”\u00a0\u00a0 A big house?\u00a0\u00a0 Yes, but…\u00a0 A husband?\u00a0 Yes, but…\u00a0 Children?\u00a0 Yes, but….but I wanted most something that wasn’t a thing.\u00a0 That was….I opened up a notebook and started writing, trying to figure it out.<\/p>\n
And this is what I wrote, slowly, a few words at a time:<\/p>\n
The things I want most\/ no one can give me.\/\u00a0 I must carve them out of myself\/ by using them.<\/strong>\u00a0 (It was in four lines, like a little poem, handwritten of course.)<\/p>\n And then I stared at what I’d written, and felt the truth of it sink into me, scalp to the soles of my feet, filling everything.\u00a0 Yes.\u00a0 That’s what I most wanted.\u00a0 Qualities of being:\u00a0 I wanted to BE what I wasn’t yet, and nobody could give me skills, competencies, character traits.\u00a0 I had to not just learn by reading, the way I learned what I studied in class…but create in myself by doing, by making myself into what I wanted most…a better person to live with, basically, though I didn’t think that clearly then.\u00a0\u00a0 I had “abilities” that needed to become “competencies, skills.”\u00a0\u00a0 “Potential” that needed to become actual.<\/p>\n It was a challenge that looked back at me from the page.\u00a0 Because although my abilities were inborn and enjoyable to contemplate, getting from “smart” to “capable” sure looked like a great big old bag of WORK, some of it probably painful.\u00a0 And I was too smart not to recognize that I had, in the past, not done a particularly good job of making potential actual.\u00a0\u00a0 I looked at it again in the morning.\u00a0 Thought about it.\u00a0\u00a0 And then repeated it to myself and…went to work on it.<\/p>\n It’s a pearl for sure.\u00a0 The gravel is all the things I tried to avoid\u00a0 having to do the carving…the living it.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 If you really want your potential, your talent, your ability to “come true”…any potential, talent, ability, opportunity…it’s going to take getting bruised, getting tired, getting back up the thousandth time you do it wrong and land on your backside on rocks.\u00a0 And we’re all human and we all make mistakes, and try to cut corners sometimes, and think we already know what we haven’t a clue about…but this holds true.\u00a0 The things you want most, no one can give you.\u00a0 You may not know yet you want them, but you will.\u00a0 And no one can give you a pound of courage, a sack of wisdom, a jar of prudence, a bucket of temperance…no one.\u00a0 They can give you a key to some door, a pat on the back, a kind word, a reference to someone else…but not those four.\u00a0\u00a0 Nor the skill with tools, or musical instruments, or paint, or language…they can show you, but only you–your mind, your body–can make those skills–any skills–your own skill.\u00a0 You must carve your character, your skills, your competencies out of yourself: your time, your body, your mind, your experience…by using the rudimentary nubbins of those traits and skills you have now.\u00a0 Your scrapes and scratches and cuts.\u00a0 Your choosing to fill your time with working on them, slowly, slowly, re-shaping yourself to be capable of what you want most.<\/p>\n One pearl.\u00a0 Lots of gravel.\u00a0 That’s all I’ve got folks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Because I spent the year after my freshman year “reconsidering [my] educational objectives” at the behest of the university administration, I was a year older than my new classmates, and in that year had had experiences that opened up eyes and mind considerably.\u00a0 Details not important in this post.\u00a0 One evening after dinner, five or Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[17],"class_list":["post-695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-beyond-writing","tag-life-beyond-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=695"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":696,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695\/revisions\/696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}