I think if I define my blog into different areas, and start to build specifically on some topics, it’ll become one of those really typical self help blogs that I honestly don’t always agree with. But I can’t help myself, I really do think about these topics, and they do mean a lot to me. Especially today.
One of my buddies growing up just won the world’s best restaurant. I’m honestly happy for him inside, but at the same time, parts of me are just wondering why I’m not there with him in some way. Why I’m not there with him at the top of the world. That’s something I really struggle with internally. Why is it that some of my friends, or peers of my age group are able to hit the top? And instead, I’m a few far steps behind.
It spirals into a blame game of sorts as well; why didn’t this teacher or that give us an opportunity to do better? Why didn’t my parents let me go overseas? The list really grows. The worst part of this is the lack of effort on my part to actually take ownership of the current state of events, and to blame everyone else for what is happening now. The pure nurture argument can really say that everyone else is the reason why you’re not standing there at the top.
But in the same way, if it flips and you are at the top, the success you hold isn’t your own, and its everyone’s effort that led you there. And that’s something that people don’t want to accept as well. I don’t know if I accept it for sure, because I think I had to go against the odds. Or at least that would be the story I tell myself.
So it’s not about how everyone else helped, or didn’t help you get there. It’s about the game that we’re all playing. Unfortunately, “the world’s best” is something that we all get fooled into. Even the word “best” or “top” is something of a lie. How long does that stay on top for? Is there a need for it to be that way? I struggle with these terms.
I definitely think that the people we are with will make us think this way. The teams that I am working with now are struggling with these terms in their own way, and they are finding their path on what success is determined by. But then again, this adds that people are to blame. So there’s definitely a thought process to why this happens the way it does. I think people contribute to how much I can grow, but I can’t blame people for my lack of efforts to try harder and to get past the groups that don’t help.
At the same time, I am quite willing to not play in the same game that everyone is playing with. Changing the game from the top or the best, to something that either I can win at, or that has no winning in the first place. I just want to enjoy the moment, without a sense of win or lose. That’s really the key to what I’m trying to think.
But for my friend, who’s now at the top, I wish you all the best. I really knew you could do it, all the way when we were fourteen. I wish I was around your life more, and I am happy for you. I hope you keep being the top, and that you keep changing the world with the food you make.