You are what you want to be most.
I’ve hated that phrase since the second I heard it. Not because I think it’s wrong, but because it haunts me. Long ago, I was chatting with a friend who was wise (a little too wise, dangit) and lamenting my lack of opportunities to pursue a certain profession. I told him all about all of the circumstances that had gone wrong, and darn my luck, I just was being kept from what I wanted. My friend was flatly having none of it.
“No. You’re absolutely wrong, Mike.”
That stopped me. I asked him to explain himself.
“You are what you want to be most. You’re sitting here telling me you want to sing the rest of your life, right?”
“Right”
“And yet you got married at 22, to someone who doesn’t want you out there three-quarters of the year.”
I stammered a bit, “Well… sure… but a relationship is another thing…”
“Not for what you say you really want. You chose to marry someone who didn’t share that dream. You then chose to have a child (who was two at the time), further keeping you from that goal, as you don’t want to be away from your baby.”
Now I was getting the picture. “But both things were important to me…”
“Both things conflict. You wanted to be a husband and a dad more than you wanted to sing for a living. You are what you want to be most.”
At this point I realized I’d been utterly wrong about my view of it being circumstantial, and was simply reduced to the bare idea of what had gotten me crossways in the first place.
“But I want both.”
He went for the jugular. “Remind me again how much you practice your voice lessons?”
Jerk. This was the part where I decided to drop the conversation. That son of a… gun… had nailed me down on my own brand of BS. It was a lesson I never forgot, and the words stick with me daily. You are what you want to be most.
Now, I’m not saying that if you REALLY want to fly around like a superhero with a cape (I do) you simply have to want it badly enough, and it will happen. It won’t. I’ve tried. Nor am I positing that a person that wants badly enough to be an pro basketball player can go play in the NBA, for the most part. There are certainly the limits of reality imposed upon the statement. It’s more about wanting things that directly conflict with one another. In those cases, your actions tend to project what you really want far more than your words do. When those two things conflict, you have a problem. You want to be an ear model and a professional boxer? Good luck.
To that end, a few Denver Nuggets questions for no reason in particular (koff koff)… and not all for the same person or people…
If the goal is to facilitate a path for young men to make it past the NCAA one-and-done issue by giving them a G-League option (a well-stated and truly great idea in my opinion), why would you be one of the very few teams left in the league to not have your own G-League affiliate in support of both the larger idea and your team’s own growth and support?
If the goal is to win/make the playoffs, why keep pushing an offensive scheme that doesn’t work as well as your best one?
If the goal is to be a team leader, set the example, and play with a happy and cohesive squad, why not play your guts out at both ends of the floor every night? Hell, at either end, sometimes?
If the goal is to grow your consumer base, get your fan base energized, know that a huge portion of your current and potential fans see your product via video, and work in the same building as the video channel you own, why not post of every piece of video you can get your hands on to the world’s largest video posting/social media site more often than every fourth game or so?
If the goal is to have everyone on the floor to be on the same page, how can communication be a problem at the most crucial moment to have those conversations?
If the goal is to be a championship team, how can you justify a lack of investment in a laundry list far longer than “G-League affiliate”?
I can keep going, but… I’m not sure that’s necessary. I’m a huge fan of the organization, the people in it, and the fan base. I truly only want to make that fan base even bigger, as I love the Denver Nuggets. I’m not trying to be a jerk any more than my friend was way back when. It’s always a painful moment to see the difference between what you say you want, and the behaviors that show something else. More often than not, and as frustrating as it can be to hear…
You are what you want to be most.
