I just started reading a novel by Nancy Moser called Crossroads. It's about a woman named Madeline who makes a decision as a little girl to always live in the small town of Weaver, Kansas. But as she grows up, and people to go war, and businesses start to move out of town to survive, and others start to move to be near family, she sees the only life she ever imagined slipping away from her—so she buys up the entire town and gives it away to people she thinks would be a good fit for the community. I love the premise and I'm interested to see how it plays out.
It got me to thinking about my own aspirations as a young boy. The first one I can remember is wanting to be a professional tennis player. I was never good enough, but I also didn't put in enough work to try to make it happen. Life gets in the way as you grow up. Work, college, the endless pursuit of girls, the desire to just hang out with friends, and yeah, just a lack of will to do what's necessary to play tennis on a higher level. In my defense, places like the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy in Bradenton, Florida weren't as prevalent as they are today and the idea never even crossed my mind to actually work, save my money, and invest in such a thing. It just didn't seem "normal" at the time.
But that's the thing about aspirations. They aren't normal. Instead they cause us to yearn to go beyond the ordinary and they demand discipline to the point of cutting out activities that many other people enjoy. I just didn't understand that at the time. I can remember telling my co-workers at my first real job that I would one day be a professional tennis player. I never even got close. And when I couldn't even compete at the college level, my aspirations morphed into something else. I wanted to play guitar in a rock band. But the same thing happened. I took a few lessons. I practiced hard. But I didn't immerse myself in the industry. Oh, and I wasn't good enough either.
I eventually settled into a nice comfortable life working in a bank. I made a few good friends and for the most part, I didn't mind the work. I could have stayed there and made a career and I would have been fine with that. It's good honest work—especially for somebody like me who likes to blend into the woodwork. But then I got the writing bug. I've always written, but for the first time, I actually followed through on an aspiration and I started attending writer's conferences, and meeting editors, and listening to the instructions of published writers. Before long, I was published and now I'm settling into a career that I never even thought about as a young boy.
But I wonder if that's what Madeline is going to conclude at the end of her journey in Crossroads. Aspirations are a good thing. Maybe even necessary to give us hope while in the midst of the mundane, but they aren't always practical, and they don't always turn out the way we hoped, and they always cost more than we ever imagined. I've adopted a new philosophy about aspirations—it's okay if they change as we go from one stage of life to another, but they need to be pursued with vigor when we do decide to go after them. Life is too short to do anything less.
