On greatness
Mar. 3rd, 2022 08:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mshmaek6Found a lovely little (BIG) community, ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
addme, and was floored reading through the introduction posts of members who were all either my age or substantially older than me. I didn’t realize this was something I needed, but… I think it’s something I’ve needed.
I’ll wager a guess that most of my issues related to aging are similar to others’. That feeling of running out of time. Of wishing I was 10x (read: 10000000x) more competent at everything I do because I’m freaking 30 years old already, so what’s my excuse?
Clarification: I would contend that I’m pretty damn amazing at most things I do. I’m a licensed counselor and I’m stellar professionally. I know this without colleagues and clients giving me feedback (although I get that quite often, too) - I’m doing what I was meant to do. I believe I’m a skilled artist, and I’m an emotional, brilliant writer. I’ve worked quite hard at all of these things. The weight I carry in this regard is more that I know I’m great but that great is a nebulous concept defined by the individual, and I say I can always be greater, more capable, more skilled. Usually I’m not acutely aware of the bar I set for myself, more that I just have this feeling that, oooh, it’s just out of reach - but if I jump one more time, I can get there! and then it’s always a centimeter too high every consecutive time. It’s not demoralizing, strangely - more like adrenaline-laced. Like, woah, when I come out the other side, what will I have that I didn’t have before? How will I have grown? What will that me be like?
Anyhow. There’s something about sinking slowly into someone else’s journal entries - the minutia of their lives, all those little mundane, sensory details. It’s comforting. It’s real. Especially someone who is older than me, because it really pushes me to slow myself and put things into perspective. Makes me reconsider the meaning I make of things. To be mindful of the abundance of beautiful, precious, normal, redundant moments in my own life, with a greatness all their own.
addme, and was floored reading through the introduction posts of members who were all either my age or substantially older than me. I didn’t realize this was something I needed, but… I think it’s something I’ve needed.I’ll wager a guess that most of my issues related to aging are similar to others’. That feeling of running out of time. Of wishing I was 10x (read: 10000000x) more competent at everything I do because I’m freaking 30 years old already, so what’s my excuse?
Clarification: I would contend that I’m pretty damn amazing at most things I do. I’m a licensed counselor and I’m stellar professionally. I know this without colleagues and clients giving me feedback (although I get that quite often, too) - I’m doing what I was meant to do. I believe I’m a skilled artist, and I’m an emotional, brilliant writer. I’ve worked quite hard at all of these things. The weight I carry in this regard is more that I know I’m great but that great is a nebulous concept defined by the individual, and I say I can always be greater, more capable, more skilled. Usually I’m not acutely aware of the bar I set for myself, more that I just have this feeling that, oooh, it’s just out of reach - but if I jump one more time, I can get there! and then it’s always a centimeter too high every consecutive time. It’s not demoralizing, strangely - more like adrenaline-laced. Like, woah, when I come out the other side, what will I have that I didn’t have before? How will I have grown? What will that me be like?
Anyhow. There’s something about sinking slowly into someone else’s journal entries - the minutia of their lives, all those little mundane, sensory details. It’s comforting. It’s real. Especially someone who is older than me, because it really pushes me to slow myself and put things into perspective. Makes me reconsider the meaning I make of things. To be mindful of the abundance of beautiful, precious, normal, redundant moments in my own life, with a greatness all their own.
