Eyes on the Prize

Are you dissatisfied with yourself? Do you wish you could be a better you? You don't concentrate hard enough. You aren't passionate enough. You don't have enough confidence. You don't get along with people as easily as you'd like. You don't get enough done in a single day. You're a rotten, lazy, bastard.

I hear this a lot. And the funny thing is how many of us do this, especially those who are smart. The smarter you get, the lazier you get. Or at least, the higher standards you place upon yourself.

I get into this situation all the time. I buy books. I mean, I buy books. Incessantly. I have bought enough books to purchase a BMW. And some books, I've bought two times because either I forgot I had bought them, or worse, I've lost them, and I need another, or even worse still, I bent one, or got it wet, and insisted on a pristine copy.

Most people don't understand why I get books, and I have to admit, I don't fully understand it myself. Except I do. I want to get better. You see, what I really want is for someone to answer all my questions. Every one of them. Even questions I didn't know I wanted to ask. I'm not asking profound questions either. I don't need to know the meaning of life, or the existence of God. I don't need to know truth and justice in the American way.

I want to be better at Excel and Photoshop. I want to podcast, and use RSS. I want to learn this dad-gum technology, and yet, the technology vexes me. Someone should sit and tell me how all this stuff works. I don't want to waste time tinkering with the tool, searching the web for how it works. Why won't my damn digital camera answer my questions? Why must I plod through a manual to figure out how to take g**d*** pictures?

So I buy books, because I expect the books to make me a better person, and yet I hate to read books. I despise it. Too much time. I'd rather sit and blog, or sit and chat with you. I'd rather read about how well the Redskins aren't doing, or pick up the latest Sports Illustrated, or listen to my man Tony on the radio.

The book buying is all about being a better person, wanting to be a better person, throwing money at the problem. And by better, I mean in all sorts of way. More knowledgeable, more compassionate, more friendly. I want to be able to make movies, make gourmet dishes, write my own programming language, take exotic photos, maybe even bungee cord. Nah, not bungee cord. Too much excitement.

I have friends who lament about why they aren't better people. You know what? I bet they get advice. And lots of it. And yet, something in the human brain is set up to reject most advice. Come on. Most of the advice is probably good for you. You need to exercise more! You need to stop talking to your friends all the time! You need to go up to that girl and tell her you like her. You need to ask her out, and not be afraid of rejection.

Lately, for instance, I've been plagued by that problem that many Americans have. Being overweight. Oh yes, I know that being overweight varies from person to person. For me, I'd like to be about 10 pounds lighter, maybe even 15 pounds.

I know it can be done because I did it. I was down to a paltry 138 pounds, from a high of 170. I lost 32 pounds in five months. Diligent exercise, restraining what I ate, and it came off slowly but surely. But then I worked, and 138 became 145 became 152 became 155 became 158 became 162. I've now had a net loss of 8 pounds. Sitting on my ass all day at work and then eating big lunches. That's no good.

For the first time, I decided to use sugar substitutes. This is when you've decided you're fat and want to do something about it. Saccharine or aspartame or splenda. I like the yellow packets, so that's what I use now. Yet, have these sugar substitutes helped? It's funny how anyone I know who uses it doesn't seem to get any thinner. Perhaps eating that pie or whatever doesn't help. The reality is your body works against you. You want to lose weight? It slows down the metabolism so you can't. It latches onto calories. You have to do insane exercise before it starts to come off, or you have to eat like you're anorexic.

Yet, will being thin make me a better person? Have I not simply fallen into the trap of wanting to be thin and beautiful, in a society that thrusts high fat processed foods in my face? You'd think someone would think of opening a truly healthy restaurant, and yet, restaurant owners must say "it won't make money"---when faced with trying to be good, most people sin a little and eat a burger or steak or ice cream".

We're in this rat race to be better people. Only a handful of us are at the top of our professions, and can say they generally like life. There are those, of course, who find the whole rat race abhorrent, and just want out. They want to sit on the beach, and have poolboys or poolgirls come out with tropical drinks with little umbrellas, and have all their basic needs taken care of. Screw being a better person. I want to be a lazier person!

I don't even know where I fall on that. On the one hand, not worrying about anything would give me a chance to do things I could never do, like make movies. And yet, realistically, that's a lot of work done better by others. I fool myself into thinking I can be half as creative as the people who really do make movies, even if there are plenty of them that are just goddawful.

My point, if I had one, is simply this. We would all like to be better, but does it make sense to be better? We're going to constantly disappoint ourselves, each and every day, and yet without these goals, we'd slip further back even quicker, and from time to time, we make forward progress. Maybe we should be Buddhist and give up such desires, and learn inner peace, and yet this is the way I've been raised. To want more for myself. To want more for others. Were it not for that, would I even have anything to blog about?