Impossible- Now let's start planning

I just watched Man on Wire - the documentary of the guy who walked on the wire between the Twin Towers in 1974. I vaguely remember this event because I was in New York City once and it happened to be in 1973 while the Twin Towers were being built.

This is a tale of courage, creativity, and a passion for life. He is really living his life right up to the edge. I can only see that because I am sitting comfortably in the middle and from this vantage point he is one of the few who is really alive in this world. I don't think it is because of the magnitude of his feat that I admire him, but the mere fact that he set a goal - an impossible one, at that - and followed through. He believed in himself enough to just put both buns into it and go! The shear force of his personality was the key. The others would have given up. The others would have folded their tents and gone home long before him. He could not fail, however, because anyone who has the creativity and courage to try such a performance will surely succeed. How could it be otherwise?

That's what I am missing in my life. I can see it in his, which is why I can see that it is lacking in mine.

I am so knotted up inside that I just don't do anything these days. I have the force of will, but no direction. I have projects in mind, but no conviction. No movement. Suppose I just take what is in front of me right now. What would I do?

We have this house. It needs a tremendous amount of work. It is a 70's ranch that has been neglected for years - us and others. The mind says "what's the point? Even if you succeed in making the place nice to live in, the neighbors will still be beer drinking, rowdy, smoking folks who make so much noise that you can't even open your windows."

The heart says, "sell the house, buy a motorhome and travel the country. Learn to surf. Help kids learn golf. Hold silence retreats in motorhome parks."

The industrious part of me wants to just start building. Build the deck. Build the fence. Tear out the carpet and put in tile and wood floors. Damn the torpedoes - full steam ahead kind of attitude.

I realized that the tension that I create here when we do a project is the same kind of tension that I feel and create at work. I am opposed to everything. I am in a weird place, that's for sure. I don't know if I'm afraid of hard work or that the results will be disappointing.

I need to keep digging.

Feeling the heat

In trouble at work. At least that's what I think is happening. It might be a case of the eggplant and the monk, but I'm afraid not this time. You know the old story - the monk is walking back to his hermitage at night and steps on something and squishes it. He walks on and begins to worry that he has squished a frog or some other creature. He worries all night and can't sleep because he believes that he has killed something on the path while returning to his hermitage in the dark.

The next morning, he runs to the spot of the "crime" and finds a squished eggplant on the path. He realizes that he didn't kill anything and that all of the worry and anguish was for nothing. He didn't know what "reality" was - he just thought he knew. He made it all up, worried about it all night, and wasted all that time on something that didn't happen.

I'm in the same position.

I'm worried about an incident that happened at work on Friday. I made a mistake initially and then compounded the mistake by handling it in a way that probably wasn't according to protocol. I did the best I could; explained what I did and why. I just have the feeling that I'm going to get fried for this one. So, am I the monk worrying all night about squishing the eggplant? Or is my gut instinct right - that I'm on the chopping block for this error.

Hard to tell.

Makes me crazy not to know.

What's the lesson?

The lesson is that I don't know what reality is in this case. I know what I did. I know what he did. But I don't know what has transpired since then.

Patience.