Thursday, October 23, 2014

Wanting and Getting and What's In Between


Wanting is easy.

We want all the time.

It drives us to reach farther and work harder. Wanting brings out our best qualities, rough and sharp to the touch, and makes us polish them until their brightness blinds us. Wanting also brings out our worst. Jealousy and rage clawing at our guts, grey matter, and speech leaving us empty and often alone. Wanting allows us to endure - to face challenges and accomplish feats we never knew we could overcome. Wanting also breaks us down. We cry, we wonder why we aren't worthy and why our friends and co-workers and the bitches we hate are so damn lucky to get what they want. Wanting makes us forget that they probably suffered through want too, and we both empathize and forget this in waves of fluid coherence that change like the tide. Wanting makes us wonder how those other motherfuckers that came before us somehow wanted more. Wanting makes us freak out when yet another obstacle gets in the way. Wanting gives us the hammer needed to obliterate that obstacle, or at least make a hole to crawl through assuming we don't just walk around it. Wanting makes us move. Wanting makes us hopeful for the future and irritable at the present.

It's the getting.

Getting is hard.

Let's take an example...

My writing partner, Stephanie, is picking up and moving to France for a month for charcuterie classes, and then moving to Chicago for pastry school for six months.

Because this will make her happy and help lead her to her ideal career.

This is a perfect example of wanting so hard that she achieved the getting.

And please, read into that previous sentence. The getting required work, and dedication, and worrying, and freaking out, and long conversations over the phone, and second guessing, and making plans for a year from now before making plans for next month let alone next week.

Getting also required leaps of faith that paid off.

It demanded perseverance.

It needed hope that things will work out.

It insisted on a sound game plan that was well thought out mixed with a tinge of fuckitall.

And you know what? She got what she wanted. She's off to cleave up sides of bacon on a rural farm outside Paris before learning to make sugar sculptures and wedding cakes.

Getting is hard.

So now, I need to go back to my wanting so I can strive for my getting. 

2 comments:

  1. Yes. Yes. Yes.
    This is a great piece and I really needed this right now. So happy for Stephanie- and so much admiration for her hard work and perseverance.
    May you also get all that you're working towards.
    X

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oh man, this totally made me cry. <3

    ReplyDelete

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