 ...In which Dave the Introvert and Dave the Extrovert
debate who he is, what he's meant to do, and where he belongs. Perhaps,
as a good friend suggests, it's a process of elimination?
Dave the Introvert: OK Mr. Love-Conversation-and-Community-are-Everything,
let me get this straight: You, the guy who doesn't like most people
very much (you clearly prefer the company of animals), you, the guy who
is not very good at loving, or conversation, or community (they are conspicuously absent from your who-you-are and what-you're-meant-to-do three-circle charts), you
are going to (a) start an Intentional Community, with all the
persuasion and selling (which you hate) to get members, all the messy
emotional negotiation and organization (which you're inept at), all the
compromise (tough for an idealist like you), and then (b) create this
think-tank-thing you call AHA!,
with more persuasion and selling (to get members and clients), all the
organization (which you have no patience for), all the facilitation
(which you have neither talent nor passion for), and all the stress
(remember your nerve-wracking innovation consulting career?) that you
can't handle. What in the world are you thinking?
 Dave the Extrovert:
I suppose you would have me spending my life in solitude, in a yurt
somewhere, writing. Tried that, you know. In the first place, I'm not
good enough at it, especially in the fiction marketplace. Talk about
stress and suffering! And how many times have I started my novel The Only Life We Know,
only to shred it and start again, and again? And you know how, after
just a few hours of solitude, I start to crave intelligent conversation
again. Remember, the who-you-are circle is titled "Who You (Would) Love Being". I may not be a great conversationalist, or great at loving people, or great at creating community, but I love all of these things. Of course I'd prefer someone else
to establish the Intentional Community and AHA!, and just invite me to
play the role in both of them that I'd do best. But we know that's not
going to happen -- this is all Too Far Ahead.
Someone has to take responsibility, someone has to start, to be the
catalyst. Attract the right people, and soon they can take over the
organization and selling and the other stuff I don't want to do.
Dave the Introvert: You know
you have neither the talent nor the stamina to be the heart and soul
behind an IC or your AHA! centre. You keep coming up with these ideas,
but they're stillborn. You get comfort from them as ideals, but you'd
never dare really try to make them work because you know you couldn't.
Fear of failure, man. You know that, like Pohangina Pete described, as soon as you get an
idea you already start to think about, and understand, why it wouldn't work. Listen to
your instincts. Time to get real and move on.
Dave the Extrovert:
Move on to what? Things are the way they are for a reason. If my Sweet
Spot isn't imagining possibilities, in AHA! or writing fiction, and
isn't being a model in an IC, or creating a model for Natural
Enterprises in non-fiction, then it doesn't exist.
Dave the Introvert: Your problem is you mistake what the world needs, from someone, with your
Purpose. You say that one's Purpose is what is needed that you care
about. And perhaps the world needs models of ICs and Natural
Enterprises, though I doubt the world is ready for them. And if
they are, then you might have the prescription for them, but you're not
the one to implement. You hate the details of implementation, they bore
you. And you're no good at them. And your prescriptions, clever as they
are, are just ideas. Hollow. Dime a dozen.
Dave the Extrovert: Your
problem is you're a defeatist. You're the one who's afraid to try. It's
easier for you to rationalize inaction, just going on doing what you're
doing. Your small, faithful, patient blog audience deserves more of
you. You want to stop feeling like you're letting people down? Then do
something hard, bold, and stick with it until it works, so no one is
let down. What have you got to lose? If you discover that wasn't the
Sweet Spot for you, then pick yourself up and find out what is. And
while you're at it, write the damn novel, keep at it until it's done,
or realize that it's another lame idea, take it off the list, and try
something else. You're running out of time.
Dave the Introvert: And what if I find out, we find out, that none of our Gifts, our Passions and our Purpose overlap, that for us there is
no Sweet Spot? How are we going to feel if we realize that what we're
good at has no Purpose? That what we love doing has no Purpose?
Dave the Extrovert: Always the dramatist! Maybe our Gifts and Passions have no Purpose yet
-- that's the quandary of being Too Far Ahead. You can't make people
want or need what they aren't ready for. In the meantime we have to be
pragmatic -- maybe spend 1/3 of our time doing something we're good at
that's needed that we don't really love doing (e.g. helping Natural
Enterprises), and 1/3 of our time doing something we're not that good
at, that's needed, that we really love doing (and work to get better at
it, e.g. conversational skills). And then 1/3 of our time doing
something we love doing, whether it's appreciated or not -- fun stuff
(e.g. writing). That's not so bad, if you can suppress your
insufferable idealism.
. . . . .
Perhaps Dave the Introvert and Dave the Extrovert both think too much. There is much wisdom in my friend Siona's advice...to just be myself:
To
me it seems that there really is only one requirement (for you to be
fully yourself) and that the authentic realization of this can't help
but embrace what you're good at (no one is going to be better at being
you than you are) as well as what you love (what other joy would there
be than to truly be your own genuine self?). It's hard for me, frankly,
to pull those three rings apart—I want to be nobody but myself; it's
what I do best; it's what's required of me; it's what I love doing—but
then I don't really feel the need to. I think Mariella
makes a beautiful point, too. I could no more distill an essence, or
even a constellation of uniquely defining characteristics, than I could
count the drops in the ocean. Who I am (what I'm being) changes from
moment to moment to moment, and watching and accepting that constant
change, the birthing and dying of emotions and thoughts and sensations,
is part of the joy of beingness itself. This impermanence is affected
by and interconnected with all those beings around me, and allowing
myself to rest comfortably with these shifts affords them a similar
freedom. A question, if you have the time, and if you'd like to indulge
me: If you felt at home in the world, what would you do next?
I asked Patti the other day: What do you most need yourself to be? How would you answer that?
Enough of this. Tomorrow, something completely different. |
MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
