a.k.a. V.J.

“You may grow frustrated and depressed, never realizing that the source of it is your alienation from your own creative potential.”

~Robert Greene

I came across the above quote online the other day and it resonated with me. I’m not currently feeling frustrated or depressed, but when I think back on times in my life when I did, it was often linked to some vague feeling that I was underachieving or hiding my proverbial lantern under a basket. I spent a lot of my 20s and 30s feeling alienated from what I imagined to be my potential.

The memory of that feeling kept rattling around on my head, so I decided to go for a stroll and mull over it while moving. I do my best thinking while walking, and my dog Millie is always up for an evening trot around the neighborhood.

Being pulled by a canine down West Third Street at the twilight’s last gleaming, it occurred to me that I haven’t felt any anxiety about not living up to potential for a long time, despite the fact that I’m nobody’s idea of a super achiever. I think that’s because, over time, I’ve come to accept the notion behind former NFL coach Bill Parcells’ famous pronouncement, “You are what your record says you are.”

My life outcomes to date, for better or worse, are a direct result of what I am as a whole person. One might say that I was capable of making more money or having a more illustrious career if I had pushed harder, but the lack of a drive to push harder is all part of the equation. You can’t look at a single aspect of your existence like IQ or educational attainment or some amorphous notion of “talent” in isolation and view that as the sole variable that defines you. Those types of traits are all intertwined with a complex human persona, social environment, and competing priorities.

When I was young, I held on to an (inflated) idea of my potential, because it was easier to tell myself that I was underachieving rather than to face up to my own limits. Who wants to admit that they might be somewhere in the middle of the bell curve? It’s a very intoxicating idea to tell oneself that one could suddenly turn on the afterburners anytime and ascend to inevitable greatness…someday. I think that’s part of why superhero stories are so popular in our culture. We all want to believe that beneath our pedestrian outward appearances, there lurks something much more — a being of virtually unlimited potential.

But as an oldish lower-middle-class man moving through his lower-middle-class neighborhood, I decided that the idea of potential is largely an illusion and a distraction from life as it unfolds in front of us in the current moment. A person could beat themself up forever over not attaining some abstract ideal. Or they could just accept their limitations and enjoy walking the dog.