I have to admit I write
about this reluctantly. I have an ambivalent relationship with trying. I guess
these mixed feeling can be attributed to once having someone say to me, that
“try was a coyote word.” By that, I took her to mean it was a word I might
choose to give myself an out, a way to fail comfortably. I know that tendency
too well. But, trying goes deeper for me than that. At least I hope it does.
That uncertainty is the source of my ambivalence. I really don’t know how much
of myself I am giving to anything. I’d like to think I am in charge, that I
define my efforts, but I really am uncertain about that. So trying stays in my
vocabulary and I have to live with the uncertainty that comes with it.
Life seems to constantly be
asking me to be more than I see myself to be. It isn’t just that I have an
inaccurate image of myself and I can do, and be, more. That certainly happens.
But there are times when Life seems to be asking me to do something I know I’m
not capable of. Sometimes I do know myself, and recognize my actual
limitations. Life doesn’t seem to care. It asks me, in no uncertain words, to
go ahead. Then, if I have the
appropriate audacity, I have to try. Trying in those kinds of moments is a leap
of faith. It is going beyond myself in some desperate attempt to mollify the
unknown.
I’ve told myself, and enough
precious others, that I know my writing, and my work building community is on
track when I’m having an “oh shit” moment. When I realize I’m thoroughly over
my head, and I have put myself in this place where I can see no way forward, I
know I’m doing a good job. I have to go to the place of my limitations to
discover any possibilities. I can’t really explain something that is this
paradoxical. I have to be hurting and totally afraid too get to a place where I
have a chance of making a difference. I don’t like to be raw that much. I don’t
like to ache nakedly in public ways either. But I know this is what it takes
for me to do anything real. I want to try, and I want to avoid it like the
plague.
Life is asking that much of
me. Sometimes, if I’m really honest, most times, I just try to ignore the fact
that I can feel when I’m being asked to go further than I’ve gone before. If I
put it off long enough the call gets louder and I begin losing my confidence in
myself, and in Life. I want to do anything else. I even fool (or so I think)
myself by doing things sort of like what I’m being called to. I’ll try anything
to avoid trying what I know is real. No doubt this is the real source of my
ambivalence. I know I’m still susceptible to fooling myself.
I should know better. I’m
just Lucky enough to have been pushed off the cliff, and to know that falling
and flying can be the same thing. But, I’m still living in a world where it
looks like falling can lead to suffering. I don’t want to suffer, but if I’m
good at avoiding that kind of suffering, I suffer with the knowledge that I’m
avoiding something crucial. In the end, I try because I make the choice of
facing my lack of choice. I choose to suffer the not knowing, the leap into the
abyss, the “oh shit’ moments, because I know that if I don’t I am going to
suffer another kind of suffering. Either way I look at it I suffer, so it might
as well be trying to be something I’m not.
Strangely, it seems as if
Life thrives on this kind of choice. I don’t like it much, but you know what,
being used by Life in this way, increases my respect for Life and for the level
of challenge I’m engaged in. I have greater self-respect, greater compassion
for others, because I have an idea how hard, and how precious, it is to really
try.
Trying, if it comes too
easily, is suspect, because really trying is a trial. There is doubt and no way
out. The jury doesn’t render the standard verdict of guilty or not guilty. In
this case the jury is within, and the consideration is the quality of life.
Real trying is living uncertainly. It is leaping into the unknown without the
pretense of a net. It is what Life is doing with us.
