The Drive for Potential

You know when you're biking or running or even sitting in your house playing a video game and you get that hit of an adrenaline rush where suddenly you're unstoppable. You pedal faster, run quicker, pound the controller until your thumb cramps (hey, it happens) because you know you can do this and you feel electric.

It's a great feeling. But it's one that we are often rarely able to associate with our day to day work or school. The monotonous ins and outs of work can rarely give you that rush. It's not like you're sitting filing paperwork going THIS IS THE GREATEST JOB EVER.

I LOVE TAX RETURNS!!!!!!

Alternately, if you do feel like that, then please inform me as to how I can get that job. But for the rest of us, it's easy to get bogged down by the mundane and lose sight of why we are doing what we are doing. Every now and then we need a boost to get that adrenaline rush going again.

Today I got that boost.

I met with a good friend and previous classmate for breakfast and we got talking about careers and changes and this very topic of feeling stuck in our ambitions. I couldn't help but laugh at how similar our lives are mirroring each other. Feeling stuck in a job, having an epiphany and then having that spark gather momentum into some sort of action.

I can distinctly remember two epiphany moments in my life.

First, when I was twelve, standing at the end of my driveway at 8:00am waiting for the bus, staring at the gravel beneath my feet and wondering what courses to take when I finally hit high school. I remember asking myself "Why am I here? What is my purpose in this life? There has to be a reason that I am standing here and not somebody else." I came to the realization in that moment that my purpose and my passion would be "To help, to make a difference, and to matter".

In my twelve year old brain this meant only one thing: well then I must go into healthcare.

I like science. I like animals. Guys, I'm gonna be a vet.

Looking back at my naive self who was having a philosophical existential crisis at twelve, I cringe a little that I felt that that was the only way to fulfill those things. Because, of course not. I've grown up in a family that is largely involved in the arts and I should know better that the arts can make a difference.
But at the time, this epiphany sent me on a surge forward into a focused drive at succeeding this dream.

Fast forward almost 10 years and I had achieved my goal in some way, and was not feeling that fulfillment that I thought it would. I had lost my drive, my ambition, everything I had planned for had fallen in on itself.

This is when my second epiphany greeted itself to me. This time while sitting at folk festival and flipping through a program. I've told this story to friends of mine before (and probably before on this blog), but it keeps popping up because it was such a moment for me.  I stumbled across an ad for a Media Studies for Social Change university program and my brain just sort of short-circuited into one word: yes.

I knew I was being sucked in by every advertising rule in the book but I didn't care because there was a spark. A rush of potential. This was something I knew I could do, something that I wanted and something that would still stay true "to help, to make a difference, to matter".

My friend experienced a very similar epiphany moment to the latter recently and we spoke for hours about these experiences. We talked animatedly, grinning constantly because we were hitting that adrenaline rush moment - but about life. When doors fly open with potential and you just want to surge forward with unstoppable force of endless possibilities.

I received second-hand rush from her spark. Just that feeling of I'M EXCITED THAT YOU ARE EXCITED WHICH MAKES US BOTH MORE EXCITED.

In true Chandler Bing fashion

I have been reminded today about why I am doing what I'm doing, and that I have found my drive for potential.


"I sat down and tried to rest. I could not; though I had been on foot all day, I could not now repose an instant; I was too much excited. A phase of my life was closing tonight, a new one opening tomorrow: impossible to slumber in the interval; I must watch feverishly while the change was being accomplished." - Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

Images:
I Love Colouring Kid (source)
Hyperbole & a Half (source)
Friends gif (source)

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A/N: I am aware I have been completely MIA on here in the last few months. Don't worry, I have many thoughts in the works just nothing else quite ready yet. Check back soon!