Showing posts with label arrogance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label arrogance. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 01, 2010

GUILT PURSUED

The thoughtful comments to the last post here and at my main blog are forcing me to look further into this murky topic. Having established that what my own particular guilt-harpy keeps harping about is that I'm guilty of Squandering My Gifts and Not Living Up to My Potential the logical next question is: what exactly are these gifts or potential which I'm supposedly not living up to? Do they exist at all or are they yet another mirage? Another false concept plugged into my brain by the competitive, egocentric, celebrity-obsessed culture we live in? 

Well, you know, maybe. But I don't think so. What I think, what I know gut-wise, is that I really do have gifts I'm not using. It's not vanity or arrogance to say so because gifts are gifts and the real reason why the exasperating little guilt-bug keeps buzzing around me is because it knows that I know that I'm built to fly but settle for crawling - I crawl very well but that ain't flying - and I'm designed to burn bright but settle for flickering, a flicker flicker here, a flicker there. 

You may say ah, but that's what we are: crawling, flickering creatures, doing our best against all the odds. Well if that's what you'll say, I'll have to disagree. Because what I really know down in my deepest of deep guts is that many of us have a locked cellar full of unused gifts - or maybe just one unused gift. It's not a thing, not even a talent, but a degree of feeling. It doesn't necessarily mean achievement or success in worldly terms. It means being willing to risk flying, Icarus-like.

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