Desire can be Borrowed
Could it be that your idea of a better life is one that sounds like a good idea but is hardly even yours? I’m not saying that it is but could it be?
I’ve been thinking a lot about authenticity. Every day and everywhere we hear about the type of things that we should be in pursuit of, we see the type of things our peers are doing and subconsciously, or sometimes, even on a very conscious level, we compare and contrast. We use those external messages that we internalize as a yardstick for how successful our lives are, how far we have really come, who we really are. But are we losing sight of who that person really is? Our person. Do we know what “our person” even wants?
I remember having a conversation with a friend of mine who was asking me if I thought she should start a side business.
“A side business?”, I asked. “About what?”
“Well, I don’t know, just something. I feel like I’m not doing more, like using my potential more”.
We talked, and talked, and what I realized from that conversation is that Desire can be borrowed. You can co-opt a desire that is not yours if you are told enough times that it is right. What defines right, or more accurately, who defines it. Is it you? Is it a desire that sprang up from the depths of you calling you towards yourself, something that you can be because it is innately who you are? Or are our ideals tainted by the idea that anything that society deems desirable should be your desire. Are your cares things you really care about? Who are we in all of this? What do we want?
One of the recurrent lessons I believe God was teaching me last year is focusing on what was given to me, what is inside me. Laser focus. Tunnel vision focus. ‘I don’t need to know what the next person is doing’ focus. A lot of the anxiety I have previously experienced in my life stemmed from what I believed was the gap between where I am now and where I believed I should be now. I mean, you’d want to ask, ‘have I been here before? you know, this place called Life’ because if I haven’t, how do I know where I am supposed to be now. But I see now that this gap, this -in my head at the time- immense gap was lent to me, and I took it and ran with it. No questions asked.
I am a girl. I have graduated from university with a degree, I am 20-something year’s old and in approximately X amount of time, I should have an established flourishing career, earning an unholy amount of money, naturally, having 4 side businesses and twenty eleven investments that are constantly yielding me the interest I would use to travel the world while living my best life in my perfect apartment while being a writer-speaker-youtuber-whatever-er person. That is where I should be, right? Wrong, because I’m not there. Because I don’t even know that I want to be there (in each aspect & in the self-imposed timeline) and because, well, who wants 4 side businesses anyway? When will I sleep, let alone live?!
One by one, I have deconstructed so many goals I had previously set for my life. One by one, I have allowed myself to ask myself the important questions- what do I value? What informs my values? Is it the person that I innately am pushing to be realized? Or the world, with all of its opinions of what success is supposed to look like.
My idea of success has been morphing and morphing. We spend a good fraction of our lives waiting to get “somewhere”, achieve “something” and become “someone”. While that is a worthy cause, sometimes we forget that we are somewhere, have achieved something and are already someone. And, we need to constantly scrutinize the ideals that we have picked up for ourselves and take stock of who we already are and what truth looks like to us.
We weren’t made to be different versions of the same person, and it is even possible, and perhaps, most likely, that the path we are going to tread is the road less travelled. It is possible that you would be happy doing one thing without a side hustle (*cue the financial motivation speakers screams and shrieks), but it is also possible that you would want to have four side businesses, and have those twenty eleven investments. It is possible that you’d want to share your world on social media, and it is also possible that you would rather not even use it. That’s hardly the point. The point is is it yours. Is it you? Is it true? And if it is not, put it down, it is weary.
I’m afraid we spend so much time concerned about the things that truly do not concern us. We pick up stories that are not ours to live out. I’m a firm believer that our purpose is to be here as the person that we are. We are here to live out the story that is ours- the work lies in giving ourselves the permission to become the person that we have the potential to become- which is really still the person that we inherently are. Social media makes it harder; I admit. We are constantly bombarded with the messages and visuals of our insufficiency, of our “less than” of the ‘this is how it’s supposed to be’. But it is our responsibility to rebel against the supposed and accept the real. I believe that if we really were putting our lives against our lives, we would be a lot more gracious with our present realities, much more secure with our portion, aware that ours is an untold story locked within us.
We need to question our answers all the time. Are we simply regurgitating the mainstream? We need to question the lives, the careers, the relationships, the commitments, the identities we are adopting. Do they align with our true values or do they just seem like a good idea. I don’t want to live a life that is a good idea, I want to live a life that is mine.
