I bounce around emotionally about the concept of making
goals. I don't want to look back and
think to myself "well, that didn't work, did it?". I don't want to fail. I know failing because you didn't study
enough, or whatever, is different than what I'm talking about, but it still
doesn't feel good. Not succeeding at
something really important. I don't want
to find out that a goal turned out to be too difficult in some way, too
challenging. I want to believe that
achieving a goal I set for myself is a matter of figuring out how to make
something work, how to break something down so that I can work on it, make that
thing happen. That it's a matter of
time, effort and creativity.
But I don't always believe that. Sometimes I feel like there's something
lurking, waiting to surprise me in a bad way.
For me, this isn't totally strange or irrational - getting sick felt
like a surprise, freaked me out. Waking
up to a spinning world. Looking back,
did I miss any signals? I don't know for
sure, but honestly I'm not convinced that I did. To borrow Oprah's phrase, what I DO know for
sure is that none of us can predict the future.
I don't have complete control.
What I also know for sure is that I can't live my life
waiting for that next bad thing to happen.
I understand a lot more medically than I used to. I am a much better self-advocate than I used
to be. I also know that there are some
things that I DO have control over, like my attitude, my effort. I know that setting goals feels
necessary. I need something to work
towards. If I don't set goals, I feel
like I'm giving in to these disorders of mine, and that feels bad. If I set a goal and it doesn't work, I guess
the questions would be not only "why?", but "did I learn
anything?", and then "what comes next?".
I've been thinking about all of this because I've been
working on a piece about being able to read sheet music again, and asked myself
why I was hesitant to finish it, to post it.
Music is important to me. The
loss of the role of music in my life - being in a band, playing duets with
others, teaching flute lessons - is very painful. If I try again to work towards a goal that
puts me closer to rebuilding my life musically, and it doesn't work, I don't
want to have to deal with that. So I put
it off.
But in the end putting off trying is giving up. Settling.
I don't want that. I cannot deal
with the pain of the loss of saying that what I have right now musically is
what I'm going to be left with. So, I
have to try. I have to dare to set
myself a goal. And maybe I have to make
myself believe that I can make it happen.
If something DOES happen that makes that unlikely, I'll have to face it,
I'll have to see what possibilities exist for me. But I can't let go of the music dream yet. It may sound like a cheesy cliche, but in
avoiding the possibility of failure, I prevent the possibility of success.
**see Part 2
**see Part 2
