Rodent Regatta

Many thanks to Rachel Lucas for yesterday’s words of encouragement. This theme of ”finding your dream” or ”seeking your passion” seems to resonate with a few folks.

After all it’s what most of us are seeking. For some it’s as simple as Is Your Job Your Calling? For others its a process that involves identifying and aligning skills, interests, aptitudes, goals and motivation.

However, to simply say Think and Grow Rich and you’ll transform your dreams into reality misses a fundamental point. Some people have lost the urge and ability to dream. It’s not a lack of motivation. It’s deeper than that.

It’s an inability to see ourselves as deeply engrossed in a field or endeavor as this example from James Lileks:

I support giving money to absent-minded scientists with pockets full of pencil stubs and cigarette butts, the sort of guys who can be found at a coffee shop writing algebra on a shirt cuff, the eggheads whose TV have an inch-thick pall of dust on the tube, and who unwind by listening to Van Cliburn recordings on a monaural turntable. Whether this sort of clich actually exists anymore Ive no idea, but Id like to think so; I have a long-standing attachment to the idea of the Eccentric, the clueless Cuthbert Calculus who cannot remember where he put his keys but can always find Orion in the night sky.

I’m not suggesting for an instant that all of us must become weirdos to pursue our dreams, but the single-minded focus on a something we feel passionate about is so often missed by the masses. More platitudes and ”you become what you think about” frustrates the person that has lost the ability to dream.

There has to be a way to return that person to an earlier state of mind that allows them to see beyond life’s current pressures, frustrations and fears.