TOW: Potential

I have been working a lot lately, and all of the working, and commuting, and life changes have got me thinking (as per usual, eh heh). This time, I'm thinking about that one great thing poet wax and wane about, that one thing in any good Hollywood movie, or any early 90's children's cartoon...and I'm not talking about fame, fortune, or contract residuals from the upcoming Harry Potter movie. No, I'm talking about the one thing everyone has. Or doesn't have. Or almost has. And it's staring at you in the face, every day. Well, almost. It's 50% staring at you. It's sort of kind of staring. Well, it might be staring at you. If you let it stare.

Ahem.

Potential is something that people talk about every day. People have the potential to change. Change is possible if we just reach out and grasp it because the future (potentially) could be better. Potential, potential, potential, etc. And the worst (and the best) part of potential is that it hasn't been realized yet. You get to dream, but it's also sucky because you're dreaming. Why CAN'T I be a millionaire with a million people who are my friends and have the best life ever???
I bet I could. I think I have it in me. Maybe.

Nietzsche, who I seem to be talking a lot about these days, was very interested in human potential. He saw the human being as something not only be completed, to be a full person that exists in the world; he saw humanity as something to be surpassed. And that is a very interesting thought. And that is a very interesting thought because nowadays every catch-phrase, every slogan, and every itty-bitty piece of advertising is about surpassing ourselves and becoming more than we already are. In other words, we all live very Nietzschean lifestyles. (Which, depending who you ask, isn't a bad thing.) And Nietzsche's values aren't wrong...there is something very fulfilling about the idea of surpassing yourself from where you are now, to becoming, potentially, greater than you ever imagined you could be.

What we need in our lives is a balance of dreaming about the things we could be, and having the drive to turn that potential into reality. And that balance is a hard thing to strike. There are real steps we need to take to make our potential would-be selves come to life. We all have dreams that need realizing...but unless we take steps to make our lives better, the future we imagine will only remain a potential dream. And the regrets we have, as they say, are, potentially, the mistakes that we didn't make, and not the ones that we did.