On Resources

While not really a rambler, this one is long-ish. This is your long-ishness alert.

It's pretty easy for me to figure out what some of my problems are. It's also relatively easy to write about them. Far more difficult is solving them.

The radio show idea is a good idea. It would be fun, enlightening, good resumé material, and might even turn around some hobby money. It's pretty much a winner however you slice it. However, before such a project gets started, a problem I seem to have is sitting down and thinking, "yeah, that'd be a lot of fun, but I just don't have _______". No microphone, no time to write a story, no big enough pool of vocal talent, no money, whatever. So the idea gets pushed under the rug (I actually have a notebook I call "under the rug") and I think that, perhaps, I'll look at it another day when I actually have _______. Another good idea shrivels in the shadow of un-had resources. I could be a more successful person, if I was just a more successful person already.

But that's really just a convenient lie, isn't it?

Why is it such a challenge to decide I have everything I need and just make the investment that stands between a good idea and a good reality? Take the Timeline project, for example. How much time have I wasted wishing I had some seed capital, or dropping hints around family members hoping they'd just give me some? I went to a meeting of local nerd types last week in which startup funding was discussed. I left frustrated because the investors they discussed want to see significant receipts before investing. "If I already have receipts, what in the world do I need investors for?!" I thought. "The system is stacked against people with ideas and no money."

Another convenient lie.

The system is stacked, sure, but against a totally different kind of person, and if it's stacked against one, it's stacked in favor of another. Funny enough, it doesn't have much to do with ideas, and probably less to do with money. The system is stacked against people without will, or motivation. The converse of which means that driven people are more successful. That makes sense, too, in kind of a "duh" way. It also makes sense that successful people seem more often to be bi-polar or something.

The question, then, is: how do I become bi-polar?

Or more realistically, how do I find my inner Drive? Is there a well of motivation somewhere inside that I can draw from? How do successful people (who aren't crazy to begin with) do it? Is it something that can be acquired? We tend to talk about people as the _are_, like "he is doggedly determined". Can a person _become_ doggedly determined? Have you heard stories of lazy people who figured out how to work, like, hard?

One would think that the thought of the potential rewards, even when a reward is very likely, should be enough to motivate a person to action. Like the radio show. Wouldn't those rewards be worth the doing of the thing?

As I think about all this, something else comes to mind. Anybody even sort of familiar with the Scriptures knows stories of people of old (or maybe people of recently) who saw or received or performed something miraculous. I was reading last night in Acts, and there's this story of Paul preaching in an upper room, and a young man who is listening while sitting in the window falls asleep during the sermon (which I'm sure I never do) and falls out the window, down about 3 floors, hits the ground and dies (I'm even more sure I've never done that). Paul rushes down the stairs and tells everyone, "Trouble not yourselves; for his life is in him." (Acts 20:10) Everybody goes back upstairs, eats some more, then Paul goes on his way. Wait -- what? Somebody just arose from the dead! It was significant enough to make it into the record, but from the sound of it, it wasn't a really big deal beyond that. Like they were happy about it, but not surprised.

It seems to me that this kind of miracle has a lot in common with some of the modern miracles we've seen and attributed to smarts or technology. Somebody has an idea of something good he wants. A gap separates this vision and the actual manifestation of the vision. Something has to bridge the gap. In Church, we call it Faith. Everywhere else, we call it Determination. What's the difference?

At first glance, all it looks like Paul "did" was run downstairs and touch the young man. It took us a lot more than running up and down stairs to land people on the Moon. However, I think it may come down to how clearly in your mind you can see the young man standing up again, or a guy standing on the moon with a fishbowl on his head. In the case of the young man, the Priesthood did the Work. In the case of Apollo 11, a lot of hands and brains did the Work (at the expense of a good deal of good health and a good many marriages and families). In both cases, the gap was bridged and the vision was forced into reality.

This makes me think I had it slightly wrong before. There's something that has to happen even before the Determination arrives, indeed the place where the Determination probably comes from. First there is a vision. Then there is Faith, or the ability to see, clearly, the vision as if it were real - taste the victory, smell the success, know the benefits before they happen. From Faith flows the Determination to make the vision real, and that is the fuel for the Work.

I've really never thought of Faith quite in this way, but it makes sense now. Faith seems to be a difficult thing to really nail down. How do you answer when somebody asks you "what is faith?" Think about the scripture you quote when somebody asks that question -- "...if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true." (Alma 32:21) If a person has more Faith, he must have more hope. What does hope mean? The more you hope for something, doesn't the picture in your mind become more and more clear? Does stronger hope not drive you more strongly towards your vision? If I want a successful Timeline project, I need to have Faith in it. That sounds like saying "I believe it can work", but it's much more powerful than that. I need to see it before it exists. I need to see it so clearly, with so much detail that it can't help but pop out of my head and into reality.

Back to the question: how do I find my inner Drive? Is the answer really just Faith? How nice would that be? Faith comes with microphones, voice talent, as many lines of Javascript and Python as you need, and the entire Grumman Corporation (if you need to build a LM). Sweet.

Those are my current thoughts, anyway. I'm sure you have some of your own. I'd like to know what they are. Where do you get your motivation?