Belief

Today, I spent most of the day just watching TV. I need to find something more constructive to do with my time. For starters, I should clean my desk. I can't even sit down at it because of all the junk I have piled on top of it. And it is mostly junk. Every six weeks or so I am overcome with enthusiasm and throw stuff away, organise what I want to keep, and dust my desk off so it's ready for action. It's all done with the best intentions but something always seems to get in the way. I always seem to get in the way of myself.

I have a friend who I've known since my school days. We see each other often and we get along well but we differ in a lot of ways and I occasionally wonder what it is that makes us such good friends. Perhaps we're more similar than I realise because despite our conflicting opinions on movies and music and other such trivial things (although occasionally we agree on something) we've always enjoyed each other's company. In the last couple of years I've noticed one major difference between us, one that has possibly caused our lives to head in different directions. That difference probably illustrates the usefulness of intentions about as well as I can get my head around it.

My friend is the sort of person to just go out and do something, without giving it too much thought. I think in my previous posts I've demonstrated that I'm not that kind of person. I tend to over-think pretty much everything. So, I'm more of a thinker and he's more of a doer. Each approach has its own merits, to a degree. But where have our respective approaches taken us? Well, he's working in his chosen field and enjoying life, and I'm doing neither the former nor the latter. It seems that at various points in our lives, when we've been confronted with choices, we've reacted in different ways. I've often let myself be controlled by my own self-doubt and not attempted something that I may have achieved if I'd given myself a chance, while he has generally just given everything his best shot and usually found a way to get through. I don't know whether he ever feels like he's going to fail and continues on regardless or whether he just doesn't think that far ahead. Unlike me, he doesn't seem to be afraid to fail and, consequently, he's attempted far more than I have over the years. However he does it, I admire him for it.

This comes back to what I wrote yesterday about the only real failure being the failure to try. I think I do genuinely believe that to be true. The trouble is, I'm not living as though I believe it.