I recently asked one of my best friends where he gets his drive from – his unrelenting passion to work for himself and others.
He replied that he focuses a great deal on those who have done more than him – role models, both in history and in the contemporary, which leads him to set high expectations and found inspiration. He’s managed to get into the habit of asking himself what he could do better, which makes it a cycle.
Doesn’t seem too outstanding if you just read it like that, but if you knew him, you’d know why I asked. The guy sleeps for a mere two hours a night, works in a downtrodden school full of kids getting screwed over by our education/class/governmental system and will not hesitate to care intensely about anyone at any moment, homeless person or family member, if they ask. And even sometimes if they don’t. I have never met a more compassionate and driven human being.
In contrast, I find that I’m I’m some blend of my own expectations and those that others hold for me, which are necessarily intertwined. Further, most of my role models and would-be mentors don’t have any time… for me or anyone else, which is probably a bad sign 🙂
My friend pointed out that it may not matter if what you know about them is real or an exact ‘truth,’ the perception of it can sometimes be motivating enough. That is if I create a hero out of someone that might still be viable inspiration, even if I barely know them. And I do this often. Unfortunately I have the bad habit of getting to know them and then watching my hope and positivity be brutally murdered in front of me. If you read about someone in a book though, this is at least less likely to happen.
Anyway what this led me to a really neat question. If we asked all of the outrageously driven people we know what makes them go – what commonalities would we find?
This also led to a question of drive and progress towards what. As Tom said:

“I don’t know if we should look for that perfect job, perfect person, or perfect day. What if instead we choose to see the perfection in what is already in front of us?”

I of course replied that we have to do both – recognize what’s great in the present (and past) and also work towards a better future. Often one will make us appreciate the other – trying the new greener grass makes us appreciate the old and recognizing current opportunities leads us to striving for more, it’s almost modesty vs. aspirations. And then it came – that classic statement, that we need balance. To which Tom replied:

“…because lets be honest the idea of balance is a boring, an easy answer that says almost nothing.”

WHAM. But yeah, he’s right. Just saying we need balance and shutting down an issue with it doesn’t really churn the dialectic. The question of balance, that’s where the action is at!
I kind of want to say we’re probably better off as a society by looking for more (or better or progress) by default, and that recognizing what we have is secondarily at best. We can find all kinds of explanations for that (Calvinism, capitalism, evolution, economics, spirituality), but it raises the question of what we mean when we say better. In some sense it’s probably the age-old eastern vs. western thing with an accent. What would the world look like if we were all, by default, more prone to appreciate what we have instead of striving for more? Would we be more or less passionate? Would we be less assertive? Would change happen is easily?
In the middle of this, I burst out:

“See this is freaking scholarly exchange! not reading a book! You can’t talk about stuff like this in academic research and bringing it up in the classroom only makes you the annoying one – but it’s stuff that really matter and determines what we do with our lives!!”

And also later a fun exchange:

“Tom: Again, that’s where we differ. In practice we are very close, we both do things to ‘improve the world’ but I would rather see beauty in the now and you would rather create it in the future. The problem with your belief is that the future is always the future. My plan allows for perfection in the present.
Jeff: I guess I don’t accept perfection, present or future.”

What we came to, ultimately, though, was this. If we try to imagine a person who’s all about appreciating the awesome things in their life, as well as striving to find and make new awesome things, we think of a really intense and driven person. Well there we go: Appreciation is the fuel and striving for improvement is the direction.