The Plight of the Anticipators

I wanted to include a quote about anticipation, but nothing I found captured what I really wanted to say. So I’ve got no one backing me up today. That’s ok. Maybe someday someone will be looking for a quote on anticipation and they’ll find this. Maybe. It’s a nice thought that kind of deserves its own post. But another day.

Here are my thoughts on anticipation:

For some, living is a drone of a thing. The monotony, the blandness of the present weighs on them, compels them to drag their feet along, dreading the toil of now. They rise and sleep without thought and without effort. If, one day, they did not rise at all, they would not mind. This is how they think to themselves. “The world would not know if I slept forever.”

For others, the lure of the past has them fixed backwards. Their feet are planted. They hold tight to the trunk of their tree as the tidal wave of the present tears at them, pushing them to a future they believe could never be bright enough. They think backwards is forward, that they are who they used to be. “It was better then,” they say. “I was better then.”

But there are those of us who live for dreams. We balance on our toes. We do not –cannot– go down with the sun. We cannot turn back. We cannot close our eyes to ourselves. We live in every present moment. We fill our lungs with it. We push up on the tips of our feet and we stretch our arms up and up and always up. We know that any day, any second, any moment we will leave the ground behind altogether.

Rest if you’d like, you weary.  Return to your past, you unbecoming.  Do what you’d like, but don’t worry for us. Don’t worry. Don’t clamp us down. Don’t rebuke our ambition. Don’t fetter our minds and tether us to you. And if you must do something, if you feel you simply must, then brace yourselves for a most incredible sight.

For we dreamers will find our wings. “We will. We will.” We dreamers will find our wings. 

Watch us fly.

Flamethrowers

Remember that episode of Avatar, when 12 year old Aang summons the courage to hold a tiny flame in his hands? At first, he winces, expecting it to explode, to run out of control like it had before. But then he opens his eyes and stares in wonder as it flickers in his palm. "It's like a tiny heartbeat."

Our desires can fly out of our grasps, catching fire to our world, burning things they shouldn't. Or our desires can live in the smallest heartbeat, too quiet for others to notice. Either way, we must never let our fire go out. Never let our desires grow cold. Persist.

Persist, persist, persist. And someday, we will have our dreams.


“Keep a little fire burning; however small, however hidden.” 
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Writing with Blood

"He that writeth in blood and proverbs doth not want to be read, but learnt by heart." ― Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

First, I'll concede: Nietzsche, while one of the world's most renown philosophers, loved to spout passionate nonsense, especially towards the end of his life. But I still keep his books on my shelf. Why hold on to the work of a lunatic? Because of that passion. Because he wrote with abandon and because he wrote with blood.

So here's what I want to challenge you on.

Whether you consider yourself an author or not, you are a storyteller -a writer in essence. Your whole life is a story. Today, right now as you're reading this, you're adding to your story. And if you believe that, as I do, I must ask... are you writing with ink or with blood?

Decades from now, will the readers of your life keep you on the shelves of their memory because, if for no other reason, you once sparked them to life with the insanity of your passion? Are you changing the world? Are you pouring everything, every ounce of your will, every dream and every nightmare, into your story?

I don't know about you, but I want to be like Nietzsche. And, no, that doesn't mean I want to contract syphilis, grow a monstrous mustache, and brood to myself all day. It means I want to write my story with blood. I want people to learn me by heart. So here goes.