My Kryptonite

It’s not a secret, and yet when it comes up I am met with any vari­ety between shock and amuse­ment. It’s true: I don’t watch scary movies. Almost ever. I walked out on the Scream movies. I avoid haunted houses. And gen­er­ally I find no desire to see what I’m missing.

photo credit: DanielaNob

Why? Sim­ple. I can’t find any enjoy­ment in being scared. I don’t like being scared in real life so why would I want to put myself into a sit­u­a­tion designed to scare me? Fur­ther more, I have an active and imag­i­na­tive mind, and scary movies stay with me. I go home and I see things in the shad­ows. I hear things in the night. And I see them when I close my eyes. And it all comes back to fear.

In the end, I face the fear, logic my way through it and come out clean on the other side. This is how I deal with fear. Face it. Address it. Progress past it.

Sort of like a super hero. You know. Chris­t­ian Bale, as Bat­man, faces the bears in the cave to even­tu­ally become the super­hero we love. Super­man has to face his ultra-rare Kryp­tonite weak­ness nearly every week. Blade faces his vam­pire desires in every movie, remind­ing him­self of his ori­gin. They all have a weak­ness that they are forced to face.

photo credit: don­bu­ciak

I’m… well I’m not a super hero. But I do have a con­sis­tent short­com­ing. And it is noth­ing new, it is my arch-nemesis with whom I have bat­tled count­less times: time man­age­ment. From my school days, to my pro­fes­sional life and on into my per­sonal life; each are rife with exam­ples where this has been a major prob­lem for me.

Dur­ing col­lege, when my grades were on the chop­ping block I had mul­ti­ple mir­ror chats, face to face with myself, growl­ing out drill sergeant style curses and dis­parag­ing remarks designed to moti­vate me into get­ting my ass in gear. And each time, I get going, get on top, decide I’m too awe­some, and pro­ceed to stop try­ing so hard. And so, just like our caped cru­saders, my weak­ness rears its ugly head and reminds my read­ers that I am not an infal­li­ble deity, but instead a com­mon man seek­ing and striv­ing to be some­thing more.

Mean­while, in the hall of justice…

So here I am again, reminded of a major short­com­ing in myself, and this time this blog is my mir­ror where I stare myself square in the face and ques­tion what I need to do to change my behav­iors to avoid hav­ing yet another of these chats.

And then I go into the deeper under­stand­ing mode, look­ing to find my moti­va­tion. What will drive me to make these changes? Not frus­tra­tion, frus­tra­tion arises from the inabil­ity to instill the desired change. Not joy, clearly I’m not happy — hap­pi­ness is the antithe­sis of change. Only when we become thor­oughly dis­sat­is­fied with our cur­rent con­di­tion will change hap­pen. Dis­sat­is­fac­tion! Yes that’s it! I am dis­sat­is­fied. I seek to be bet­ter than I am. Always look­ing to come out one iota bet­ter than I was going in. And then to grab onto that improve­ment and embody it. Make it not a coat I wear but a piece of the inter­nal machinery.

But most impor­tantly, I real­ize that my changes are not dri­ven by fear. I am who I am, no mat­ter how I act. And so I advance beyond the fear and step past it into day­light and begin the steps fur­ther into the future.

photo credit: James Bowe