She has potential

I think we all have words that follow us around our whole lives—simultaneously a hollow echo that lives in our heads and tells us who we really are despite hopeful evidence to the contrary, and a giant rock we drag behind us that hampers our progress.

My words are “too” and “potential”.

“Too” as in “too sensitive,” “too emotional,” “too intense,” “too direct,” “too needy,” “too nice,” “too available,” “too shy,” “too weird,” “too depressed,” “too distracted,” “too idealistic,” altogether too much. A belief that took over basically my whole personality at a very young age was that I took up too much space and demanded too much of others with my needs, my ideas, my sensitivity, my expectations, my feelings, myself. I became practiced at making myself smaller around other people, putting others’ comfort before my own by default to the degree that I couldn't even identify what being uncomfortable felt like until very recently.

Obviously, there is too much to say about this as a preamble to the point I’m getting to, so I will have to revisit “too” in a future post. What I want to talk about is my other Word Nemesis, “potential.”

The funny thing about both of these words is that they suggest that I am two opposite things: too much, but also not enough.

How is a person supposed to live like this, I ask you?

I do not know, but I have tried. Even if it hasn’t looked like it on the outside—according to somebody else’s benchmarks of what it should look like—I have always tried my best. Despite this, I have so often felt I have failed. Why? Because I fell short of my “potential.”

School is brutal. It shapes who we become out in the world which, based on anecdotal evidence, seems to be diminished versions of ourselves in some way or another. It’s entirely possible that I am talking exclusively with the wrong subset of former school-goers, but there are very few people I’ve spoken to for whom school was a generative and expansive experience. It seems there’s just no kind way to breed personalities in captivity.

As well as the social aspect, there’s the whole grading system of it all—which I guess is intended to encourage us to keep doing better, but has the added bonus of determining our value compared to our peers. Report cards were awful, but it’s not the grades I remember (roughly decent for the humanities subjects, mediocre-to-bad in the sciences and sports)—it’s the comments that summarised my performance. This was the recurring summary of me as a student, which my child self interpreted as a summary of me as person: “She has potential.” Which translates to: “She could be better.”

Words like that can stick to us like chewing gum to hair. Imagine hearing you “could be better” when you’re already doing your best, and doing your best because you’re a person who doesn’t know what’s expected of you, only that you’ve been told that who you are needs to be dialed back. In which “being your best” definitely doesn’t mean “being your fullest”—there is another ideal, mystical version of yourself that apparently exists, yet no one has met, and so you throw every ounce of your being in every direction, a hero’s journey that is actually a map of many-headed snakes and ladders.

What does Fulfilled Potential look like? There are so many possibilities when you are so many things. The more complex a person is (which of us isn’t?), the greater the potential for potential. There are so many facets of you to dial down, and you spend your life trying to be more of something while being less of who you are.

I got asked a mildly hilarious question recently: “How are you not famous?” I took it to reference numerous positive attributes, the confluence of which might lend themselves to “fame,” whatever that is. It was intended as a compliment, I think, but what it also referenced was What I Could Be, But Am Not. In terms of potential, there are few more nebulous concepts than fame. I suppose it implies success, “making it” for being myself. Which version? When you have spent your lifetime chasing potential in so many different directions while being told not to be yourself, authenticity is the first thing to go.

You spend your life asking two questions: “More like this?” and “Less like this?”, while that echo in your head tells you, “Not yet, and probably never.” You never fully show up as yourself, but as a self that comes with dials that autocorrect to whatever situation or environment it finds itself in. It comes with a face that fixes itself based on who they think they are required to be, and a thermostat so finely tuned that it can read the temperature of a room or a person in a second and adjust the settings accordingly. It is never not working, and all the while it is working while dragging a giant rock.

The good news is you short-circuit eventually. It is good news, I promise—because when you finally run yourself into the ground, stopping doesn't feel like failure, it feels like mercy. At this point, you have a choice: you can try to refuel and restart the machine, its components worn thin but programmed to pick up where it left off; or you can decide you can’t do it anymore. And you just stop, and you find yourself in the middle of all the directions you’ve been pinging between.

I’ll say it again: you find yourself.

You are not All The Things You Could Have Been. You are exactly who you are, right now. You are fucking exhausted, but you are you. You’re done trying, and you stay rooted to the spot; eventually, those roots spread downwards, and you blossom outwards. Turns out you’re not actually a machine, flower. And you see your potential, finally: all the growth that was stunted because you were running around instead of planting yourself. That’s all you had to do.

Because here’s the kicker: You already knew who you were all along. You didn’t need to do anything except let yourself be. You transform, but it’s not really a transformation at all when it’s already who you were.

Maybe the worst part of this becoming is that some people—maybe a lot of people, depending on how many were happy with the version you gave them—won’t like it. Pleasing them might be the hardest impulse to change, but it is the old programming that will come between you and your best, most honest self. It’s the difference between doing your best for yourself and doing your best for others. For this, I’ve got no shortcuts; just like you ran yourself into the ground til you couldn't anymore, you’ll choose yourself when you can’t choose other people anymore. For those of us who didn’t grow up knowing how, that’s just the way it usually goes.

Who could I have been? So many things! But in the process of chasing my potential, I realised I was not becoming anything, fully.

Lately, I’ve been reading an interpretation of the Bhagavad Gita. One of many passages that have resonated with me cites chapter 3, verse 35 of the Gita:

The occupation given to you, though imperfect, is better than another’s, even perfectly done. Defeat on one’s own path is better; for another’s path is dangerous.

It is best to know our limitations and work honestly from our natural level, rather than try to be other than we really are. If I accept a path meant for someone else, whether it is more or less demanding than my own, and deny my own nature and disposition, I will be led to disappointment and frustration.¹

I find this infinitely comforting. It reminds me of something Jim Carrey, that human channel of source wisdom, said:

You can fail at what you don't want, so you might as well take a chance on doing what you love.

I wish this was what I had been told as a child by the people who said I had potential. I wish I had been asked, “What do you love?” and “What makes you feel good?” and “What makes you feel bad?” and “What do you like about yourself?” and “Are you ok?” Perhaps I would have understood sooner that those who expressed an interest in whom they thought I could be weren’t interested in seeing me as I already was, or encouraging me to meet and like myself.

Wishing is futile, but I think we’re allowed to be pissed we didn’t get what we needed earlier; I could read the Gita for the rest of my life and I don’t think I’ll ever be that enlightened. I do, though, have enormous gratitude for who I am, and who I was all along. I like the idea that, even on our worst days, we can look back and say our track record of survival is 100%. I did that. You did that. How’s that for potential?

From somewhere right between too much and not enough,

1. Ranchor Prime, The Bhagavad Gita: Talks Between The Soul And God