wondering

I wonder if I'm going to matter.

I mean, beyond the "gosh, josh. that was just the right thing at the right time - I really needed to hear that and you made my day" type thing.

I wonder if I'm going to spend my life dinking around, getting by, and progressing just enough to stay a few steps ahead of the average.

I wonder what my biggest talents really are. I wonder if I'm ever going to stop putzing around that question and actually begin progressing towards excellence in the areas where I am aware of giftedness.

Last year someone who'd read a leadership guide I'd written told me I'm "remarkably self-aware for someone my age". I wonder if I really am, or if I just spend so much time self-obsessing that to the more practically-minded person it takes on the appearance of depth.

I wonder if I would fritter away my hours with contemplation like this if I wasn't a member of the world's class of economic elite - comfortable beyond the kings of old (hello, water closets!), made docile and fat by too much leisure. I wonder if that's why I keep planting trees - because it keeps me too busy and tired for existential angst.

I wonder if I just go on about this because I feel that it validates my life to have conflict. Perhaps I feel that in a conflicted, violent world the petty indifferences of my daily life are something less than real - perhaps I create mental conflict to compensate for a lack of real challenges in my life.

The truth is, I needn't do very much at all in order to get by. Excellence, in this system, breeds excess - which I'm afraid of. And so, instead, I retreat to mediocrity and mind games. Afraid of my own potential, I hide in the ease and comfort of the consumer, conformist self I've allowed to be shaped by the selfsame society around me.

Someday, I hope soon, I'll be kicked in the head by reality and I buck up, suck up, and be a man.

Fortunately, until then there's always this website to keep me occupied.