Not having goals may make life feel meaningless, but having goals and doing nothing to achieve them makes it feel damning.
It never fails, the hardest thing for me about writing has always been sitting down to write. I’ll do just about everything under the sun (i.e scroll through Instagram, taxes, iron my socks) to avoid starting the writing the process. I’ll tell myself that I want to write, but I’ll then find every excuse not too.
A few months ago, I was sitting in my room one afternoon living in the middle of one of those excuses not to write, and I fell down a rabbit hole of YouTube videos from the TV show, ‘The Office.’ It was in this hole that I found something, a kick in the pants that I needed to hear. There was a video that featured interviews from the selected cast of ‘The Office’ reading lines from their future characters. In it, the actress who plays Pam, Jenna Fischer, read this line regarding her job on the show as a receptionist:
“I don’t care if they get rid of me . . . I don’t know what I’m going to do, but whatever it is, it’s got to be a career move, not just another arbitrary job. Jim’s advice was, ‘It’s better to be at the bottom of a ladder that you want to climb rather than halfway up one that you don’t.’”
That last line, the one about being halfway up a ladder that you don’t want to be up, really got to my 26-year-old self.
It’s a weird place to be in, having goals, dreams and aspirations, but not doing anything at all to pursue them. It's like looking out over something beautiful and turning away from it like you had just looked at the back of your hand for the hundredth time. It’s a realization that’s not only sad, but even more so, self-deprecating and hostile.
I have goals; They’re aspirations that I set for myself over the years based on my gifts, skill set and passions. I want to write a book one day. I want to start my own business that funnels a communal environment into a town that lacks it. I want to invest in the lives of individuals who are younger than me who are seeking the same types of things that I sought. I want to make a difference, and to be living a life that doesn’t pursue any of the differences you want to make is living a life without purpose.
There are a lot of reason why I chose (choose?) not to pursue my goals. Pursuing goals isn’t safe, and there’s risk. There’s a great possibility of failing, and is there anything scarier or more demoralizing than failing to achieve one’s goals or having others criticize your dreams?
I think not.
For a long time, I’ve felt halfway up a ladder that I didn’t want to be up. I was climbing up a series of safe steps that were comfortable and provisionary, but while they were safe steps, they were also dangerous. They were steps that were turning my hobbies into career moves and turning my goals into unachievable dreams due to lack of pursuit and experience. I was scared of failure, and I was scared of lack of provision.
Recently, at my church in Tulsa, we went through a sermon series that covered the book of Judges in the Bible. In this book, there’s an overwhelming pattern of God’s people repeating a pattern of sin and failure over and over again that looks like this: The people serve God, they fail and fall into sin, they become enslaved, they cry out to God to save them, God raises up a Judge to deliver them, they are delivered, and then the entire cycle repeats itself over and over again. The funny thing about the book of Judges and this cycle is that it’s really easy to focus on the repeating failure of the people in the story, rather than the repeating pattern of God’s redemption.
I don’t want to take this Biblical narrative out of context, but I think there’s something to be said for God’s redemption in people’s failures - even in regards to pursuing the goals and passions that He has instilled in us. It’s one thing to fail in choosing to follow our own, self-preservation narrative in rebellion to what He has put in our hearts. It’s another thing to fail at trying to follow God and the dreams He’s given us - in that, I believe God has endless patience and endless grace, and that is a good realization to believe in.
After taking a hard look at the ladder I was standing on, I’ve stepped off of it for the time being, and I’m standing at the bottom of a new one with the same old fears of failure and lack of provision. I can’t see to the top of this ladder, and I’m not exactly sure what’s supporting it; however, I feel like this is a ladder that’s made up more of the steps that lead to goals - goals that make life feel meaningful and a lot less damning.
-Cliff
Cliff’s Note: It’s never too late to look at what ladder you’re on.