When I was a young man, I lived in small-town Mississippi with a close friend of mine – he was family really. We had grown up together; both the ideological, outspoken, nonconformist, wild and rebellious sons of devout Christian preachers. We shared similar dreams that we had unsuccessfully chased in Southern California as soon as we had escaped high school together. A helluva lot sooner than our youthful hubris would allow us to believe was possible, we failed and had retreated back east, back home; with the tattered remains of our adolescent hope, a six-foot python and whatever else we could cram into the back of his ill-tempered Nissan Pulsar to that same small Mississippi town that we had endeavored so desperately to evacuate; lost and defeated together. We settled into my parents hastily renovated garage and set about plotting our next move. There was a time and this was that exact moment in time when we saw the world through the same lens. That time has long since passed and as it turns out has possibly no bearing whatsoever on what I sat down to say but since I started here, allow me to finish the thought.
Our garage accommodations quickly become yet another cage and he moved on: first to Scott Street and later out to Old Highway 8. Family runs deep in the South and he was as much my brother as my brother is so I trailed not far behind. There are early-morning, admittedly drunken conversations on the back porch of that Scott Street shack that are as clear in my memory as what I had for dinner tonight – exuberant, passionate declarations of what we saw then the world to be and how we could fix it. Because of a hyper-confident belief in our personal worth, neither of us had ever seriously considered college. Ours was a wisdom that only experience could provide and even though in hindsight we’d experienced next to zero then, our confidence in that belief and in our inherent human ability remained unshakeable. We didn’t always see eye-to-eye but as a rule, we respected the other’s opinion. You might not remember this, but there was a time when humans had actual conversations. You held a belief and had a faith and a voice because of what you housed inside your heart and head, not because of what the internet told you. Whatever the conversation, there was always a component of it rooted in the idea of change. That conversation stretched from that failing back porch into the construction job we worked for my old man, to the ride home from church, to driving all night to find the thing and walking the rest of the way home when we couldn’t. The last time I saw him in Alexandria, the fire of our conversation was as stoked as it was the first time on some random tailgate deep in the random forests of some lost Mississippi.
At some point, his focus became more clear than mine and our life paths diverged. I haven’t spoken to the man in ten years or more at this point – couldn’t tell you where on earth he may even live. His words and thoughts and truck stop wisdom during those never ending porch nights and road trips and drunk walks however left an undeniable, indelible mark on my subconscious that I’ve only recently fully internalized and only now am able to attribute to him. Take a bow old friend…you finally made the argument I’d never let you win back in the day.
A French philosopher much smarter than me once said, “A goal without a plan, is just a wish.” I ask you this – have truer words ever been spoken? A guy I used to know once said the same thing progressively across the years of conversation I mentioned above. It’s a tricky thing to know what you want, isn’t it? I don’t think I’ve personally always | maybe ever known explicitly what I wanted and most days I question if I do still. The ever-changing personal, professional and emotional landscape of a normal, fully-formed human’s life, typically allocates a remarkably tiny and surprisingly inhospitable sliver of soil for the seeds of any true actualization to be sown and an even more restrictive environmental window for said seeds to gestate.
I don’t often frame my thoughts within or with any regard honestly to the construct of math not only because I suck at it but moreover because “math” as a thing is useless in an age where all the answers are a mouse click away. It’s the logical equivalent of learning Latin – what’s the point? My 9th grade algebra teacher would shudder if she heard me say those words but we’ve lost touch since that time I threw a jack-o-lantern through her front door in ’87 anyway so whatevs. What I do remember of what she tried unsuccessfully to teach me was this, “No matter what process you use, you always have to find a way to isolate ‘X’ on one side of the equation so you can find its true value.” Despite fifteen-year-old-me’s vocal objection, algebra does in fact have real-world applications but only if one chooses to evaluate the equation from a different perspective.
I’ve rambled to this point and if I know anything about myself, I’ll stray from the path again but meantime, ask yourself this, “What is it that I truly want?” What is your ‘X’? Life is a complicated chaotic race against time, right? Is it even possible to know what the soul truly wants anymore? I’m not sure. I am sure however that if one is able to see clearly enough through the fog of war that is the daily grind then there is a pathway to anyone’s goal. It doesn’t really matter what that goal is as long as you are unflinchingly focused on it. That’s your ‘X’. My boy from way back? His focus was simple, singular and laser specific – to get the hell out of Mississippi. Once he had isolated that desire, he quite literally filtered every second of his life through that ideal. Every decision he made from that point forward was evaluated by asking one question: “Does this get me closer to or farther from my goal?” He followed that thread to the end of the spool and it changed his life forever.
Your ‘X’ doesn’t have to be earth-shattering or life-changing or even overtly complicated but it probably is. Otherwise you would have already just done the damn thing, right? The critical and likely most grueling component of the equation is identifying your actual ‘X’. Equally if not more torturous but absolutely essential is having the constitution to wholly commit to it and maintaining the requisite discipline to follow the path to its end. If it were easy, everyone would be fully satisfied with every aspect of their lives and there’d be no need to have this conversation. That’s not the case though is it? It should be said that I’m seeking the same solutions you are. My writing this isn’t indicative of anything other than that. I don’t have the answer and I’m an authority on very little – I’m just talking this out.
I conducted an exercise with the staff at my work recently where I asked them a simple question, “What would motivate you to do a better job?” It was to be a vehicle through which I would ascertain if our firm was as good as we in leadership constantly try to convince ourselves that it is. (It is by the way.) The responses were fascinating and spanned the spectrum from uber-thoughtful and well-intentioned to flippant and absurd. They were all incredibly valuable and not only afforded me a deeper insight into our employees’ collective and individual mindset but also comprised the framework of the 50-page Studio Culture Assessment I delivered to the principals. There is a tremendous value in providing a human being the opportunity to voice their opinion and I’m confident that the recommendations I made as a result of this exercise will pay huge dividends down the road and make us even “better” than we already are. That said, through no fault of their own and possibly directly because of the manner in which I framed the question, they almost all completely missed the point of the exercise. What motivates anyone isn’t a physical thing I don’t think – there has to be a deeper internal force in play. I don’t think it’s even something as vital as money. It’s not a more flexible schedule, a better insurance plan, more comfortable chairs or any other tangible thing. Identifying what motivates you is the first step on the twisting path to understanding what it is you want, need, deserve. Whatever it is that motivates a human being to get out of bed in the morning and participate in this world is the foundational cornerstone of their ‘X’ whether they realize it or not.
There is a fundamental human necessity for all of us to identify what “motivates” us. What is the point otherwise? Why bother enduring the often grueling catastrophe that is human existence if one doesn’t have a vision for the future? How can you even pretend to play if you’re not fully aware of the reward you seek? How do you know if you’ve had a good day if you don’t have a context within which to frame it? How can you solve the equation if you don’t identify and isolate the primary variable that will give your life value? I’m fond of saying that the purpose and focus of my life is to get better at it – that’s really hard to do if I don’t know what “better” is.
If there’s a point to be made here it is this: life is a son of a bitch and you have to try really hard every single second of every single day. Buckets of rain will fall. You will lose a helluva lot more often than you will win. Even if | when you are fully self-aware, the strength of your convictions will not guarantee that your voice will be heard. Even if you have the tenacity, conviction and discipline to follow your path to the end, your path will most certainly be fraught with impossible obstacles. Even when you display an adroit capacity to weave your own perfect tapestry, the threads that bind your dreams to reality will invariably become undone. The sun will rarely be on your face. The wind will never be at your back. The finish line will scarcely ever be in sight. Every single second of every single day will be a battle. If your ‘X’ means enough to you, nothing I’ve said above or anything that occurs subsequent will matter. It’s your game – do your thing.
Get focused. Identify your ‘X’. Solve for it. Move forward and find the next one.
“A goal without a plan is just a wish.”
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