I Meant to Be More. I’m Learning to Be Enough.
What if doing your best was always the point?
More and more I’m OK with who I am.
This admission takes me by surprise.
Most of my life I’ve deplored my accomplishment. In whatever sphere of endeavor – school, business, writing, romance – I’d meant so much more. The gap between actuality and aspiration shocked and puzzled. I was always mortifying myself, as Jane will attest. My journals whine.
I suspect I’m not unusual in this. Many are haunted, hunted by their inadequacy. This disappointment may give rise to preternatural exertions, despair, or both. Hamlet is our poster child – “I have that within that passeth show.” I kept yearning to “prove myself,” as if I were an equation.
Psychiatrists and other mind-readers might know what breeds this pathology. My concern was less the cause than the consequence. On the one hand, my inadequacy kept me busy, racing to catch my dream; on the other hand, it surlied my temper and upset my sleep. It still does. Last night, I went to bed happy and woke up grumpy. “Not this again,” I groaned. Before the first sentence of today’s missive, I’d befouled half a dozen journal pages with my funk, talking myself down. What a waste of ink!
I will never be satisfied. But recently I’ve been more forgiving. No race worth winning is winnable. Judge yourself, then, not by your standing but your effort: did you make the most of your chance?
On this front, I awarded myself a passing grade, to my surprise. My pile of words testified to my diligence. Six million, I estimated, give or take, half published, half not; five or ten books, depending on how you count. If I fail to gain a foothold on Parnassus, it won’t be for want of trying.
In America, we judge success by outcomes: did you strike it rich? It took me a lifetime to realize that calculation’s cock-eyed. From kindergarten tot to tottering oldster, the only question worth posing is, did you do your best? Did you give the game your all? No one can jump higher than they can jump, but if you jumped your highest, pal, rest in peace.
Henry’s canine coaching helped. He and his namesake, Henry Thoreau, arrived at similar conclusions by dissimilar routes: “Live the life you imagine.” Everybody loses their race so don’t sweat it. Hounds, Henry points out, don’t hound themselves with the subjunctive – woulda, shoulda, coulda – comparing today to some air-brushed yesterday or rosier tomorrow. Like Irving Berlin’s Annie Oakley, they’ve “got the sun in the morning and the moon at night.” Be who you are, that is, who you want to be, and let that be enough!
This advice seems too bromidic to dispense. Yet it’s taken my soul a lifetime to accept what was obvious to my head. Of course, my Henrys were right – but until retirement, I didn’t dare be who I dreamt. I hadn’t the guts.
I blame pride. Do we lead our lives to satisfy others or our self? Lucky those for whom both are one: they want to do what others want them to. They were “born to” play baseball, command troops, trade stocks. More usual, I suspect, are my sort, for whom “two roads diverged,” and they opted for the smoother, trampled by a parade of trudging boots.
If I’d died when my father did, at age 47, my life, except for my kids, would have been a flop, my self-disgust warranted. But I got lucky – I lived – and luckier still – I loved – and then I won the lottery they call retirement – and I wrote – and wrote – bettering my best.
I’m OK with that.