I suspect I'm not the only one who reaches a certain stage in life where something you've seen or heard or read or been told and tolerated for years suddenly reaches the point where you just have to say: ENOUGH!
It finally struck me recently how often I've read or heard or been told this year: "I don't want to." Variations include "I don't want to be bothered," "I'm not motivated enough, "It's too much hassle," and so forth. I clearly make a distinction between this from the legitimate "I can't" with accompanying valid reason.
Well, some of us -- me included -- don't have the luxury to "don't want to" even once in 365 days. That's not a complaint or a request for sympathy, just a statement of fact. (Understanding, consideration and respect for the situation is different and appreciated.) But what has hit home with me is that I cannot tolerate this whining any longer. The more I am exposed to this attitude, the more I find it can deflate me personally, given my own situation. That is, if I allow it to. And I'm not going to allow it to any more because I'm just going to reject it by tuning-it-out as much as humanly possible. And that's for my own good.
On the business front, I don't know if Brian France's elimination-format Chase, or Mark Miles' start-end sooner IndyCar season, or Daytona's $400 million "re-imagining" rebuild, just to name a few examples, will be successful. But at least they are trying to move forward. I don't think it was an option for anyone involved on those fronts to sit in a Board of Directors meeting and say, "I don't want to."
I doubt very many people blessed with wealth, health, happiness and family who could very easily say "don't want to" to virtually anything, actually do that. Maybe spoiled-brat trust-fund kids, but that's about it.
And while different people have different situations, and while I usually don't mention this sort of thing because I deeply believe in personal privacy, I doubt Fox Sports' Steve Byrnes or NASCAR.com's Holly Cain have the luxury of "don't want it." Both of their battles with cancer are public knowledge. I know Steve and Holly, they are solid professionals, and valued guests on my old radio show. I'm certainly not the world's best pray-er but I am for them and others not in public view dealing with what they must deal with.
Back in June, I was in a medical facility, prepping for some fun. There was a woman, I'm guessing 10 years younger than I am, in another prep area. She kept repeating the "don't want to" line as a nurse and tech attempted to do what was necessary. I feel for this woman's plight but "don't want to" sure wasn't going to help her get better.
Fighting off the negative emotions (and that is very different from the informed/experienced criticisms sometimes published here), putting energy into positive actions, is the only way to overcome life's Big Time challenges. Part of that, for me anyway, is to stay-in-the-game to the extent reasonably possible. This could easily have been the year when I ended my various projects, including writing, or looked to turn over the Jim Chapman Award for excellence in motorsports public relations to someone else. That would have been the easy thing for me to do, and possibly, the wisest. But that, at least for me, would have been to give up. It's healthy -- if sometimes a strain -- for me to remain engaged, active, informed, mind-and-body making the effort. It's healthy for me to take on challenges, as best I can, even when I come up short of what I expect of myself. And, perhaps above all, it's a matter of pride, satisfaction, accomplishment, responsibility and self-respect.
There's a famous line from Apollo 13 as NASA's Mission Control team works to get the three astronauts on a crippled spacecraft home alive: "Failure is not an option."
In my real-world life, "I don't want to" is not an option. And something I'm not going to deal with any longer. Not argue about, just not take in, lest I be mentally brought down in its wake.
[ more next week . . . ]
