We're so hard pressed,
Deciding between the comfort of a simple, borderline conformative life
And our doing that one great, difficult, rewarding thing
That's been on our to-do lists
And in the back of our minds for years.
On a particularly illuminate night,
In just a moment, pride bursts from our chest--
We are unstoppable
We will achieve
And the world is ours for the taking.
The goal is set
And the goal will be achieved.
But
Often just one sleep cycle later,
The inspiration--
It's all gone!
Not just missing.
But evaporated completely.
Forgotten.
After the motivation of late night thought
That allowed our hopes and dreams
To be carried to beautiful completion
Within our mind's eye,
Carefully and wondrously --
Something in a more shallow part of our brain changes
And so-called reality crashes in.
With the awaking of a sunlit bedroom,
This "change" smashes down the walls to our dreams
Reminding us that, yes, we may have entirely figured out life last night,
But today is back to our responsibilities
And more importantly, the grind.
"Complete your routine," your auto-pilot morning brain says:
Brush your teeth, drive your car,
Go to work.
Use all your energy to progress some cause or business or person
You otherwise wouldn't be concerned with
If currency had forgotten to be invented.
And when you get home,
Relax.
Don't look to seize the world and all that it owes you,
Because you've got work early in the morning!
Stay in and get to bed.
Then take that morning routine of yours
And rinse and repeat.
Every day.
That's the most important part.
Every. Day.
Sometime, a few weeks from now,
Probably on some reflective Sunday night,
We'll once again find that manic inspiration.
The motivation,
The deep feeling of hope.
It's finally back--
And this time
It's different.
Except, but...
It isn't.
We somehow lose it,
Again. And again.
As our nighttime dreams strip the emotion and excitement from our bones
And offer instead
The disappointment of waking up bleary eyed
To some work we'd rather not do.
The downside of this so-called Struggle
Seizes the desire of our hearts
And carefully, almost thoughtfully, takes it hostage.
It doesn't smash it--
No.
If it smashed it, we'd be too inspired to take up arms against an obvious destroyer
Of hopes and dreams and goodness.
Insistent mediocrity has no room for that kind of spark, that kind of passion,
That kind of motivation, that kind of action,
Does it?
Because would it really stand a chance against our true full force?
Our fury? Our potential?
No, rather than provoke us to action with a clear destruction of hope,
The Struggle forgetfully derails our desire,
Clouds our vision,
And slowly peels back our passion
Piece by piece
Like a surprisingly capable drunk Jenga player
That forgets to put the removed piece back on top of the tower--
Never building,
Slowly taking away,
Dismantling our excited, determined mania
Until our tower seems so janky
That we don't even MIND that it topples over,
Because what good is a hole-filled tower to anyone anyways?
So how do we stop the cycle?
How do we hold on to the hope of greatness and goals
And stop the central demotivating sector of our brain
From preventing our achievement?
Well damn.
I've got some theories, but...
Hell if I know.