Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly.

A thought crushed me like a ton of bricks.  Just now.  Literally.  And while this metaphor is a bit overdramatic and decidedly not literal, you’ve read enough of these by now to understand that this is not the point (Or, a hearty welcome to you, reader #6).  The point is that, as usual, I am going to write an unnecessarily long preface to my thought, followed by a short, unsatisfying explanation of said thought, and then somehow avoid coming to any sort of conclusion.  But this time, the pieces fit.  I’ve had an epiphany, if you will.  Actually you can, but I won’t.  I’m not a fan of the word “epiphany”.  Mostly because I disagree with the spelling.

The most selfish person I know recently told me that I am a self-absorbed narcissist.  This, as far as I can tell, represents a change in thinking for her because up until that point she was one of the people that I believe I had conned into thinking that I have a soul.  It was an important statement because it was perhaps the most pithy thing she has ever said to me.  As it turns out, she does not double as the wisest person I know.  Or the most intelligent.  Or the most insightful.  Perhaps still the most interesting though, which is not so much a statement of how interesting she is as much as it is an indictment of everyone else I know.  Not you though, you’re right up there.  Seriously.

I mention this for two reasons.  First, because despite the source, this statement is correct.  Second, because it is important for you to realize that without one thinking about oneself at a near pathological level, epiphanies (literally, for lack of a better word) like this are just not possible.

I spend a good amount of my day trying to figure out what the hell I am doing at wherever it is I am at any given moment.  I always sort of feel like I have yet to get over the proverbial hump.  I’ve always felt like things should be better in some ambivalent, dubious sort of way.  It’s not that things are bad.  They’re not.  I really have nothing to complain about.  I’m not sure I have much to get excited about either.  So at what point does that change?  Does it change at all?  Am I at least allowed to hope for this?  I could make it happen right?  Hard work and determination?  Never give up, never ever give up?  Uhhh….. Here’s the thing.

And this is what hit me.  Hard, you know, kind of like a ton of bricks.  I have an intense and over-riding fear of success.  And of course, this is the most arrogant fear a person can have, which is exactly why I have it.  Of course, this sort of implies that I have the capacity for success, and considering that I have never really done anything it is entirely possible that my greatest attribute is the ability to dupe people into thinking that I have potential.  Potential is sort of an elusive concept, because if it is never realized, could you say it was ever really there?  Lots of people at various times have told me that I have potential in different areas, but since that has never really come to fruition, is it possible that I just suck at everything?  I have to at least consider it.  But of course, I won’t really.  Not yet.  For now I am sticking with the idea that success scares the shit out of me.  Mostly because I think I am right about that.  Consider the evidence.

I have now played seven seasons of NCAA football 2007 with Temple University, and for the last two seasons we have been on the brink of playing for the national title.  But I always blow it in the last game.  So I’m a choker, right?  Possibly, except that in this game you can choose your own schedule and I always save my toughest game for last.  So I like a challenge, right?  Well, Consider this.  I have a Master’s degree.  Barely.  I think my nickname around campus was “D-minus”.  Master’s level academics sure seems like a challenge, right?  Well, way to rise up son.  And of course, this happened for a lot of reasons, the most obvious of which is that I didn’t work hard enough.  But then again maybe I’m not smart enough.  I like to tell people that I will get a Ph.D, but maybe that is too far over my head.  I don’t think so, but there are lots of things about reality that I refuse to believe.  I believe success frightens me.  So I pretend to try.  But not really.  There’s more.

Despite the fact that I clearly had the best team on paper and was the #1 seed going into the playoffs, I blew my fantasy football league this year.  And you could argue that I have little to no control over what happens on an NFL football field from week to week and this is true.  Except for this.  One of the reasons I had such a good team to begin with was that I put some time and effort into it.  Included in said time and effort was the fact that every sunday at 12:45 I double checked my lineup to make sure none of my players would be game time inactives.  Except for the week of my first playoff game.  Since it was Christmas Eve, I spent the day with my brother and did not watch any football.  I would have done this anyway, except that we left the house at roughly 12:27.  Had I waited an extra 18 minutes, which I totally could have done, I would have seen that Braylon Edwards was deactivated for that week because of an attitude problem, and I could have inserted Mike Furrey into the lineup and scored nine more points for the day.  Check the record that week.  I would have advanced to the Super Bowl.  Potential?  Am I afraid of what would have happened had I won?  I think so, and I’ll explain in a minute.

All of these examples occurred in the last six months, but it is nothing recent.  I finished my undergrad with a 3.449 GPA, or .001 away from graduating with honors.  That is completely true.  What is also true is that I received a B in a class my final semester from a professor notorious for giving as many A’s as possible.  The reason?  I didn’t even entertain the idea of studying for my final exam.  It was an easy test, but with about 30 minutes of studying I could have aced it.  But I didn’t.  And I was in Lakeland, FL for fuck sake.  It’s not like it was Mardi Gras.  I had the time.  What would have happened if I had studied?  What am I afraid of?

But this predates college as well.  I like sports.  I mostly watch them these days, but I used to play them.  I was OK at most everything I tried, but if I was good at anything it was baseball.  I played on some pretty shitty baseball teams most of my life, but one year we were good.  We were in the playoffs, and by any objective measure, we were the best team in the league.  In the semifinals we played a team that wasn’t nearly as good as us but for some reason they hung around and took us into extra innings.  I was playing second base because I always play second base.  Their fast leadoff hitter was up with two out and none on, and I knew he was going to hit it in the hole between first and second because he had done so in all three of his previous at bats.  So I played him that way.  And he hit it right at me.  Hard.  I fielded it cleanly…and promptly threw it three feet wide of the first baseman.  Their guy got second on the error, stole third, and scored the go ahead run on a wild pitch (like I said, he was fast).  And to be fair, our first baseman was fat and a normal sized guy probably could have stretched and made that catch.  And to be fair I obviously didn’t make that throw on purpose.  But how would I have handled winning a championship that year?  I wonder if I could have.

It wasn’t a high school thing either.  In sixth grade I purposely misspelled a word in a spelling bee so I wouldn’t win.  I spelled guitar with a “j”.  In second grade I used to get the answers wrong on purpose when the teacher called on me.  In first grade I pretended I couldn’t read.  It’s all true.  And it’s all hitting me just now.

I wanted to do some research on the fear of success so you would think that I was clever.  I wanted to tell you it was called blahblaphobia and it is just as irrational as fearing spiders or the number thirteen and just as covered by a good health insurance plan.  But it’s not.  There is no phobia associated with success, which means it’s a completely rational fear.  And suddenly that makes sense.

What happens when you succeed?  You do something great and suddenly you have peaked.  And that is precisely what scares me.  What happens next?  How do you follow the best thing you have ever done?  You could try to top it, but that isn’t likely.  What is likely is that it is all down hill from here.  And if that doesn’t scare you, it should.  And everyone will use some sort of cliched platitude explaining that it is better to do something great once than to never reach the mountain top.  And I can’t decide if I agree.  Maybe it’s better to skate by on potential and be eternally hopeful that something better will happen and happen soon.  But there’s always the chance that it won’t.  There’s always the chance that I suck.

So true to form, I have no idea how to wrap this up.  But I know that I should.  So at what point does could, would, and should become can’t, didn’t, and won’t?  And if I potential never gets realized, does it ever really exist?  Maybe instead of being disappointed with the people in our lives who just don’t pan out, we should be disappointed in ourselves.  Maybe we were wrong all along about all those people we thought could be something and weren’t.  Maybe everybody’s been wrong about me.  Maybe the people who thought I sucked were right.  I’m not sure what the thought of that does to me, but somehow I’m not so afraid anymore.