Re: where do you find inspiration and willpower?
The following is an excerpt from a private exchange. I am sharing it with the permission of my correspondent. Their identity remains a secret.
I was wondering - where do you find inspiration? When I read your posts or watch your videos, I feel like you have a clear vision about what do you want in life, as well as a very strong willpower. Where do all of that come from? What guides your actions? I feel like I know where my life is heading to, and I think I am in a good direction overall, but anyhow sometimes I don’t feel that inspiration, that willpower, to do the right thing this day that will lead me closer to my life goals. I keep thinking about previous failures, or getting distracted by trivialities that I know don’t contribute anything to me. I am able to hide such things merely because my responsabilities are still small compared to my abilities, and so my carelessness does not hurt me too much. But I’m afraid the moment where that doesn’t hold true anymore (which will probably happen soon), I’ll just collapse under the heavy weight of reality.
I do not know if I have strong willpower or if that is my primary driver. Yes, I am committed to the things I care about and do what I must with them consistently and decisively. Though I never had the capacity to bend the world to my will and “achieve greatness.” The macro view of my life is one of spontaneity and of going with the flow. Things have been happening and I have simply been adapting to them. At each phase, I would have an idea of what I wanted to do, but I could not force it to happen.
When I was a teenager, I was single minded about becoming a footballer. I was good at it and had the work ethic plus discipline to continue. I did not care about school and was a bad student (was also unruly, talked back to my teachers, skipped classes, …). But I could not achieve what I wanted because of forces outside my control. I got injured, the support network to swiftly deal with that was not there, and I had to change paths.
Then I ended up in college and started caring about intellectual matters, so I became a good student. University life was a challenge for me initially because I had to adapt to the practice of studying. I was not used to that but I got the hang of it. Also, I had to work in parallel to cover for all my expenses, so I never had the typical “student life.” It was home, work, school, work, home. Thinking back, perhaps it is this very challenge that motivated me to keep going, just so I could prove to myself I was capable of it.
My ambition at the time was to continue with my studies and to accumulate all the formal qualifications I needed to become an academic. But, again, I had not foreseen the eventualities: I got a job in politics thanks to my blog/website which made me known to the politician I ended up working with. I was a policy analyst for a few years. Then I realised I did not really have a passion for formal studies. In fact, I rediscovered my former athletic self’s need for action and physical intensity in response to what started to feel like a dead end in my life: politics and office life at-large is not for me.
So I ended up far away, literally and figuratively, from everything I was working towards up until that point. I did manual labour, discovered Linux in my free time, played around with the computer, found Emacs, learnt to program, and also built my hut. None of this was in my mind some years prior. I had no grand plan to be here. The analogy, thus, is that I jumped off a cliff with the hope that I would grow wings on the way down.
Maybe there is willpower there, which is what keeps me going. Sure. Or maybe it is something to do with my attitude. What I notice in retrospect is an unmistakable indifference: the sense that I do not identify with any of my goals or achievements. So what if I once was a footballer and unruly teenager? Now I am a good boy doing my studies. So what if my job before politics was bartending? Now I do the technical work of amending legislation and live among those powerful people. So what if I worked at the European Parliament? Now I do construction or work in the fields…
Indifference, then, manifests as defiance or shamelessness: I do not feel I need to behave or look a certain way in response to some standard of excellence, simply because I do not care what others think about it. Concretely, in this moment I do not feel ashamed to say that I am a philosopher despite the fact that I have no formal qualifications for it (I would argue those are overrated, anyway, but that may be just a rationalisation of mine). It may then be this indifference that keeps me going, as I have no inhibition to rise to the level of whatever challenge I am faced with.
With these in mind, I can answer the question of “what guides your actions?” with “fun”. Yes, fun! It has to be that, rather than some master plan of careful consideration. I enjoy a challenge when it is somehow close to heart. I did it when I would fight for every ball on the football pitch (my nickname was “dog”, which you know what it means if you have tried to dribble past a dog). I did it when I had to work and study. I do it now in establishing myself in my land. There is a rational component to it, of me working towards a greater goal, such as stability and safety, though I have to acknowledge the visceral aspect, indeed the thrill, of doing something difficult.
About collapsing under the weight of a challenge, there is always a chance this happens. Though consider that you have not put yourself to the test and you might actually be able to cope with the challenge once you commit to it. It is a matter of trying in earnest. Think of some great athlete for inspiration. I remember when Lionel Messi, arguably the greatest footballer of all time, missed the penalty in the 2016 Copa America final against Chile. We can imagine how even this unique genius of a player was experiencing doubt about his abilities and how he was unsure whether he had it in him to deal with the challenge. He failed then but came back stronger to show us what he could achieve.
My attitude in this regard is the following: I might lose, yes, but every fibre of my being will make sure this is a fight you will never forget. It then is a matter of embracing our animalistic side, this part of us that involves passion and emotion, instead of pretending we are mere rational agents of action. Rationalism is a figment of imagination that is taken for granted in certain fields of endeavour. Life teaches us there is more to it though and that the multifacetedness of our being cannot be reduced to a simple calculus of rationally operating at the margin of optimality. Not only are we not driven by pure reason, we also lack the requisite information or knowledge to always make an accurate assessment of the case and of its potential outcomes.
What, then, is the “clear vision” you ask about? It is the eagerness to adapt, which is the other way of saying that you recognise how little you really know about what is happening and shall transpire. Life teaches as much. You have goals and express desires, yes, but you ultimately work with what you have and accept it for what it is. This is because there is a whole world out there outside your volition. It does not revolve around you and will not accommodate your wants. If you get what you want, then you are happy, but if you do not get it, then you must also be content for learning something about you and/or the world. It may be time for you to make changes, which is ultimately what this world is all about. To what end? I do not know.
I am now meeting my goals. Is it because I have the willpower and do whatever I want? Or because I ultimately lowered my target to something achievable?
We do not choose to live, nor what life is exactly like, so why should we be choosing every instance thereof? All we do is experience phenomena as they unfold. It is a struggle, it is a pleasure, and all the rest. It might also be fun, if we see it all as a game; as a cosmic dance that simply happens.