The thing about a writing exercise is that no single outcome or product matters. The cumulative effect is what’s desired by most, much the same as regular physical exercise makes for an overall healthier being. But that seems to also miss the mark somewhat. In any truly committed endeavour there should also be a definite underpinning of fear. A fear that can take a myriad of forms.
This is true of so much of life. We speak high praise of the ‘driven’ individual but we neglect and ignore the fact that in order to be driven, someone (or something) else must be doing the driving. And so it is that we forget the fear that so relentlessly, remorselessly drives success.
Fear of failure, fear of success, fear for leaving behind a grand legacy, fear of being alone. So much fucking fear.
But what is there that can sit in place of fear? Love? Certainly not!
While love may be the antithesis of fear, and while love may even be stronger than fear, what it leaves in its wake is vastly different. Acceptance, happiness, satisfaction, contentment, peace. Virtuous as these may be, they are too self-contained. Too whole.
Wholesomeness doesn’t lend itself to an unrelenting drive. In fact, wholesomeness and drive are natural enemies.
So the most driven are, by necessity, the most broken and the least whole. Among other things, this foundational characteristic also leaves the driven incapable of understanding or relating to the less driven in society.
Over time then, we have built an artifice of excellence based not on our most balanced and whole members of society, but rather founded upon the manias and obsessions of our most broken and unstable members.
Is it any wonder then that the cracks are showing and the foundations are starting to crumble? Is it any surprise that when the dominant social order exists not to empower society, but to bend it to the peccadilloes of those broken few, that society begins to rebel? Is it at all shocking that the broken, weak and insane members of the driven classes are breaking, weakening and crazying up the place? Really?
