3.15.2012

revelations and revolutions

A few months ago, I found myself frustrated and angry without really knowing why.  I felt stifled, over-structured, and like I couldn't do anything.  Being human, this led to immediate lashing out about something apparently trivial.  I snippishly and passive-aggressively complained to Mr. Geek that I'd been wanting to play DDR (dance dance revolution, a video game that involves a lot of jumping around) for months and never got to.

He just looked at me and asked, quite simply, 'what's stopping you?'

I then proceeded to sit there and do what was probably an extremely good guppie impersonation.  I opened and closed my mouth repeatedly as my brain took a leave of absence for what must have been several whole minutes (while being laughed at, of course.  In retrospect, it was quite funny).

What was stopping me? 

My brain had shut down because there was no reason.  No good one, anyway, and his question had cut right to the heart of that.  I knew what I wanted to do, I had the means to do it, and yet I was standing in my own way while inventing worthless excuses that allowed me to be frustrated and unhappy.

How messed up is that?  Who in their right mind would want to be unhappy?

This is a fairly trivial example about a video game, but the general point illuminated by the silly situation is relevant to pretty much everything.

I suspect that if we would only get out of our own way, we'd be able to accomplish so much more than we think we're capable of.

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