achieve – Observations and Misunderstandings

I was lying in bed this morning feeling frustrated. I’ve not been sleeping as well as I usually do and that usual is to close my eyes and suddenly the alarm is going off nine hours later. I’m not sure why I’m not, but for whatever reason I find it understandably annoying. The frustration I suspect is like a wind that gives the fire oxygen but it’s a lack of something that’s the kindling.

I’ve led a reasonably interesting life so far, been to a few places and met many faces. I don’t really feel proud of it like it’s some accomplishment despite the positive response I get when I tell some people. There is certainly a lack of contentment and despite how it may appear I feel a constant drive to achieve things. I often see some of my friends or really successful famous people and I’m envious of their lives. They seem to have a success I don’t. Careers, homes, families and bank balances yet I’m thirty four and my instincts have rejected all of these things until now. In fact I still see the futility of some of them and I know the things they have sacrificed to achieve them, things I’m seemingly still unwilling to as I plan my next adventure. Can we adventure forever though? We can’t eat our memories, we can’t shelter under them and eventually we just become those repetitive old travellers others avoid because all they have is their stories. I don’t often tell my stories unless they come up as a relatable anecdote, I don’t want to be that person.

So why the frustration? I hope you don’t feel me to be self indulgent with this piece but it’s simply I know expressing thoughts like this can help others with their own thoughts. I’m not saying my thoughts are anything special but more that I’m not unique and we all suffer the same things just through different eyes. The frustration stems from a lack of something in life as I said. I’m not sure if it’s a home because I have one now and it’s great and safe but it’s not going to bring me happiness on it’s own. Maybe it’s a family? A wife and kids. Again I’m unsure of that, although I don’t doubt it would be nice to have a woman in my life. Perhaps it’s just wanting it all, or more precisely wanting an idea of how I imagine it’ll be.

I was thinking that for all the knowledge I’ve learnt over the years; meeting wise people, reading wise texts, experiencing moments of understanding; I still don’t seem to put much of this into practice in my own life. It would explain why it is still knowledge within and not wisdom. The only thing I’ve learnt is that unlike twenty five year old me I try to avoid giving wise enlightened advice or talking in that empty way people do when they think they know it all. I feel an immediate inclination to end the conversation, or I’ll carry it on but sometimes it just feels stupid. I know it can impress people, and you see people taking it in but it doesn’t feel real. Unless you start living it it’s just a series of empty words.

A series of desires about something we imagine we want and a series of empty words then. I know the rhetoric about contentment and desires but I’m not content and I still desire. I know the words that give the impression of a level of enlightened but I feel as far from enlightened as I’ve even been. This is the frustration then. Why what I know doesn’t correlate in any way to how I act. This is why I feel confident I can say this aloud and it will resonate with others, another thing I know is that others don’t act on what they know either. Perhaps it’s just part of being a fallible human. Perhaps we just need more than knowledge of words. This drive to achieve life, live it to whatever fullest version we choose. Again this is just an idea of a desire. I think I need to end this here because I can see myself going in circles. The answers aren’t attached to my tail. Maybe the answers aren’t attached to anything. Maybe there are no answers. Perhaps that’s what I’m missing, but what does that even mean? Just empty fucking words again.

My plan yesterday had been to start talking about football and depending how it evolved, hopefully find myself on the topic of corruption. My brain however had a mind of it’s own and certainly was a long way from working. Today, has not been that different, my brain still has a mind of it’s own and I haven’t seen much evidence of it working.

It’s that time of year then when we all start to look at our lives and ask the difficult questions. I haven’t necessarily had a bad 2019, it’s been great in many ways but I’m ready for 2020 too, ready to see what it has to offer. I realised recently, or in the last six months I think, that worrying about how old I am and life passing me by is pointless. It stemmed from attempting to move into what could be considered the normal world and thinking that at my age I was ill equipped. In hindsight it’s clear now that the folly there was to mistake what equipment was required.

Of course these fears come from seeing how much stuff people are doing with their lives and while I know I’ve done some cool things, I know right now I could be doing more. I don’t like the idea that life is passing me by even when I know it’s not. I don’t want to be cheesy but ultimately it is all part of a process, and as long as you have a goal you’re on a journey, even if that journey is to merely achieve the goal of finding a goal to achieve. There are some podcast guys I listen to, specifically Dr Christopher Ryan for the sake of this point, who have achieved some known things in life and probably a lot of unknown things, as well as periods of doing fuck all, but he’s now in his late fifties and still evolving into something cool, achieving things along the way. I mention him not to idolise or replicate him but to highlight that really we get caught up so much with this idea of age and having limits of what it is we can and have to have achieved by certain ages. It is interesting really just to see people still doing things at certain ages when societies and many of our peers tell us we can’t or should be doing something else. Saying that it is also double-edged as I met some memorable people traveling still, who had been been traveling too long, who I felt should have perhaps stopped and done something else by their age. If living the dream has now become ironic then you may have gone too far.

I still haven’t managed to talk about corruption but that is fine. You see I’ll get there, that is a point to achieve and everything relating to it or not is just part of the journey in reaching it. So tomorrow will be the last day of this decade, and who knows what the next will hold, but I’m excited for what it will, and that includes how I’m going to get there. Who knows, if I make it exciting enough there may even be a little corruption on the way.

Tag: achieve

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