Aim Low

 

 

 

I was hanging around in Beaufort, North Carolina with my friend, Victor. Ruth Ann, my boat, was anchored in Town Creek, just inside the High Rise Bridge. There were three or four marinas in the creek with lots of fancy boats, but my little boat and I swung on anchor just off of the Junior Sailing Club. My vagabond schedule was wide open, so I was doing a little work on Victor’s boat while he was at his “real job.” In the meantime, his circle of friends had adopted me in spite of the fact that they were all a bit less than half my age. It was November and the tourists were gone, so we played beach volleyball on Friday evenings, and then grabbed a bite to eat on the way to a late night pub crawl. The whole crowd was very sweet and welcoming to some random older guy who their friend had brought along. 

During that month, there was a bonfire behind a duplex out near where the state highway splits off from Live Oak Street. It was deep in the evening as we all sat around the fire, drinking and laughing. Over our heads, the stars peaked through the mostly bare branches of a big old tree. We had developed a banter and there were more than a few jokes about the old guy. 

Later, as we had all gotten a little quiet and basked in the glow of the fire, one of the gals asked, “So, Todd, as the old guy, what advice do you have for us?” 

I took another swig of my beer and thought about it for a moment. 

“Aim low,” I finally said. 

Calle scrunched her face and frowned deeply. Whatever advice she had been hoping for, it was not that. I imagine she thought I was a little drunk, but it wasn’t the right venue to try to explain myself any further. Even though I was deadly serious, the spell had been broken. If I had somehow appeared wise earlier, now I was just an older outsider speaking in tongues.  

“Aim low” might not be exactly the right slogan. And I don’t mean that one should have no aspirations. “Don’t aim too high, too early” is too clumsy even for a drunken sailor. Nevertheless, that must be the first step. You must strive to appreciate what you have and to clearly understand where you are before you try to determine what you want your life to be. 

For example, if you were in an unfamiliar city and desired a cup of coffee, you would ask directions from a local. That friendly stranger, or even Google Maps, would give you directions starting from where you were standing. In order to tailor their advice to what you need, that person might also ask if you had just wanted a quick cup to go, or to linger in a cafe, etc. It would make no sense for them to give you directions starting from their house or from another town. Nor would it make sense for them to give you directions to a wine cellar or a hardware store. Their advice would pertain to what you had wanted from your current location. 

Further, if you were toiling at a job that you hated, you would not want to just grab the first other opportunity that came along. You would want to do some research into that new company to find out about their work culture and practices, etc. You would want to know things like: the duties and responsibilities of the position; the schedule; the pay and more. None of these isolated facts would be helpful to you unless you already knew precisely what it was that you didn’t like about your current job. Jumping blindly to a new job cannot solve the reasons you were frustrated. Frustration can only be solved by understanding its causes.

It is the same with your life. You have to start from where you are. Before you can decide what it is that you want, you have to evaluate precisely what it is that you think is good or bad, meaningful or not about your present life. For if you didn't know why you were unhappy, how could you make a clear decision about what would make you happier? If you aspired for something different, without coming to terms with how you felt about your life as it is, could you really make a good decision about which other option was the better one? Would it even be possible to make a meaningful list of options without that prior self knowledge?

Sometimes it is not easy to be honest with ourselves, but it takes brutal honesty to properly consider our own circumstances. It takes effort and a commitment of time, to slow down enough to evaluate the life we lead … and then … the life we want.