I was reading a Reddit thread today with an incredible quote from a Redditor:
“You are a precious resource.”
The word “resource” sums up, so perfectly, all the energy, passion and time we have on this planet. That line inspired this post and this slight rephrasing: You are not a renewable resource.
By energy, I mean the amount of physical and emotional energy you possess. By time, I literally mean the amount of time you have, each day. By passion, I mean what it is that gives you motion, what illuminates you. That’s different for everyone.
It’s the warmth that washes over my best friend Elizabeth’s face when she’s holding a paintbrush, the fervor to which Mike plays his keyboard. It’s the lightness, the fire that shoots through me when I realize I have summed up a seemingly indescribable feeling with a few short, simple words.
That’s passion.
All of those elements combined, time, energy and passion, make up the pure essence of who you are and what you want to become. That’s why I’m so wary of wasting them. I know what can happen if I don’t appreciate their worth.
For a lot of people, life happens. You find yourself sacrificing what’s important for what’s easy and available. There’s this pressure to make choices, decisions, and to make them as quickly as possible. There’s expectations preset by society, family and friends. Can’t decide what you want to be for the rest of your life?
Ok, boom – you’re an accountant.
Numbers are okay, you’re good with them, and you like the form they take when they’re stamped on a check with your name on it. It’s a decision, and it’s good enough. It will bring you enough happiness, enough well-being, and enough comfort to get you by.
If you’re not careful, that one decision, that comfort begins to shape and define your life. It determines where you live, who your friends become, who you become. That comfort flows and fills the cracks of your uncertainty, and massages your weaknesses.
Before you know it, that accountant, who settled in one defining area of his life, finds himself settling for other seemingly insignificant things. They seem like small, unimportant choices – what he orders for lunch or which shirt he chooses to button up in the morning. But those little “meh” things, those small mediocre choices reinforce a part of you that starts to embrace being comfortable, no matter who that turns you into.
Your precious resources – your energy, your passion, and your time, begin to be allocated to other areas of your life. Your energy to your career, your passion to the comfortable indulgences you need to balance that career, and your time to both. It’s a simple path to follow, one less treacherous and challenging than fulfilling a dream.
Choosing the other path is difficult, because of how easy it is to go off course. A huge misconception is that if you love something enough, you’ll do it. We believe that if we want something enough, our time, energy and passion will be limitless.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
The truth is, if you want something enough, you need to work for it. There will be days where you’ll have to make time, muster energy, or force passion. You’ll waver; wonder if it’s really what you’re meant for.
Those are the times where you’ll need to believe in it the most.
You can’t just want it when it’s easy. You need to learn to want it when it’s difficult. Many times, it’ll be even more difficult because the rest of your world will be simple and comfortable. It will be easy, a relief, to give up.
The naysayers, the practical people in your life will support the surrender. Perhaps they have given up on dreams of their own, or perhaps the complacency of their lives was too satisfying or too comfortable, to sacrifice. It’s understandable, but you’ll need to remind yourself of their influences when you ask for their guidance.
You need anticipate that during the most challenging times, you’ll need to be prepared with your vision. You’ll need reminders to reinforce that belief in yourself. You’ll need to surround yourself with people who build you up, and if you don’t have any, you’ll need to go it alone.
These are hurdles you need to jump.
I like to imagine my life as a tapestry. The threads are the small, seemingly insignificant choices, good or bad. They’re the people I have in my life, the places I’ve gone. The patterns, the weaves are the result of those resources. So far, my most vibrant and wonderful weave is Iceland, a stripe bursting with color and definition.
It sounds cheesy, but I know that no one will have the confidence and vision in my tapestry as I will. Only I can anticipate and visualize the design, only I can sew the limited amount of thread. After time, my resources will start to deplete, and I’ll either be closer, or further away from myself.