The Want to do (and how to do it)

This writer feels a Want to do, a Want to create and move forward. The ‘wake up early, have a coffee and get to the desk to make… something’ kind of doing. And, truth be told, there is nothing stopping this writer from doing that. Not really. But the seed of stagnation is there somewhere in the back of the mind, growing and becoming more apparent as each day goes by. There is nothing stopping this writer from taking the figurative shears to it, pruning it, digging up the roots. But he doesn’t. Or, at least, he thinks that he doesn’t do it as often as he would like to. Instead, this writer thinks that seeing other people’s success, other people’s pruned stagnation, will inspire him enough to not need to uproot his own.

 The seed was probably planted when he was too young to remember in a time when the Want wasn’t there. All that mattered then was Lego and movies and TV and video games and school. Anything outside this was wrong, forbidden, to the young writer’s mind. Clubs and activities? No sir. Exciting and exotic food? Off the menu. Back then, it had to be as it was, as it is, as it will be. Life would continue uninterrupted by thought, and this writer was happy that way.

 

But, little by little, change marched over the horizon. Movies started to become more than just movies. Books, interesting (who would have guessed)! The world of food altered from a tall iron gate into a welcoming warm palace to be embraced with gusto. How had this happened? Maybe, through living life, these things work out, eating at the bacteria of stagnation. Life would now continue uninterrupted by emptiness.

 

The Breakfast Club was something that this writer, and many others like him, felt was made just for him. Viewed at a right time in life, the film is designed to be made just for him, or for her or for them or for you or for me. People being people, not groups, not superheroes, not idols, but people, blew this writer’s fourteen-year-old mind. Maybe, this young writer thought, maybe there are people out there who I should know. Maybe time spent with others is the key, is the way to live, is the way to create. The pruning began.

 

Back to now, the present. This writer feels a Want to do, a Want to create and move forward. Without realising it, this writer IS creating, IS moving forward: learning lessons from great artists like Lynch, Neistat, Reggio, Sachs, Thompson, Pirsig IS moving forward. Waking up early with the Want to do IS doing, for this writer. Realising where you are, where you have come from, and where you (might) be going, IS doing. A spirited man, forever more spirited than this writer will ever be, once said “It’s okay to look at the past but don’t stare. Let go, but don’t close the door. Listen closely.”