"Let’s Lay Siege To The Gods, Wilder Style"
by John Wilder
"My high school freshman science teacher would, like many teachers, wander from the topic at hand. There was some political situation or another going on. Honestly, I don’t remember what it was, but the news was all atwitter: “It’s a crisis!” Yeah, we’ve seen that before. It wasn’t a crisis, but it was a good way to bring in viewers. So, my teacher made the comment: “A crisis isn’t an ongoing situation. A crisis is a moment in time when it all falls apart. It’s an instant, not a month-long process.”
He is correct – that’s the historical meaning. It was the turning point, not the turning week. Now the most commonly used meaning is “a tough, lingering, situation”, which was what he was railing against. If everything is a crisis, nothing is. I guess he had a point. But, words really do change meanings over time. “Awesome” used to describe the wrath of God. Now? It’s a teenage girl describing a photo filter on InstaTHOT®.
Marcus Aurelius, who is still dead, wrote the following: “You get what you deserve. Instead of being a good man today, you choose instead to become one tomorrow.” Hint: rinse and repeat that a few times, and we all find out that tomorrow is a graveyard. Tomorrow, really, is the enemy. It takes that crisis as a point in time, and moves it to a tough situation.
The difference is big. A tough situation is something you don’t like, but have to live with, like a hangover or being Kamala Harris’ husband. A crisis is a here and now moment, where I’m staring myself in the mirror, and saying, “This has to change. Not next week. Not tomorrow. Now.” Every single change I was going to do “tomorrow” died on the vine. They were failures. The reason is that I wasn’t ready to change.
What separates anyone from being a world class, well, anything? The first is talent. To be world class, you have to have talent. So, if we’re talking about me being a world-class high jumper, well, I’m probably not going to do that because I can’t control gravity, at least as far as you know. But if I do have the talent?
The next thing I need is dedication. I need to work at it. I need to push myself again and again. I need to learn the 20% that gives me 80% competence, and then push to give the other 80% of the effort that makes me better. A study done on world-class musicians, for instance, showed that they didn’t practice less than their less able counterparts because of their talent. Nope, they consistently practiced more the better they were. That dedication, though, starts with a moment in time, a decision. A crisis, if you will.
The decision to be world-class starts well before one gets to be world class. It starts with the single-minded focus and dedication of a fanatical beginner, like a four-year-old who just found a bag of chocolate chips in the pantry. And the beginner doesn’t wait to start tomorrow.
The beginner starts at the moment in time they decide that they’re going to devote themselves to becoming the best that they can be. Then comes the hard work. The sore muscles. The aching brain. The long plateau where even though there’s a lot of effort going on, there just doesn’t seem to be measurable progress. But one foot still goes out in front of the other. The long walk continues.
Eventually, those who follow this path fall into two camps. The first are those who look to a moment in time. Winning gold at the Olympics®. Winning the Super Bowl©. Achieving that goal. Those people often fall apart. They worked towards a goal. And then made the goal. And then what? That’s the tough question. Often, those people end up with a single question in their minds: “Is that all there is?”
For those people, those focused on the goal, the answer is, “Yes, that’s all there is. You can be forever known as the guy who scored four touchdowns for Polk High in the 1966 city championship game against Andrew Johnson High School.” And then you can get married to Peg and sell shoes. The other choice, however, is to realize that the goal isn’t the goal. The goal is the struggle. The real payoff is the process of remaking yourself into something new and better. The goal is to recreate yourself continually. Chase the grind.
Another dead Roman, this time Seneca, wrote: “I don’t complain about the lack of time. What little I have will go far enough. Today, this day, I will achieve what no tomorrow will fail to speak about. I will lay siege to the gods, and shake up the world.” Huh. Didn’t know that Seneca needed a co-writing credit on "Big Trouble in Little China."
None of this, though starts tomorrow. It starts now. I can give the effort of someone who is world class right now, even though my performance isn’t yet world class. We are either remaking ourselves better than we were, or we are dying. Your choice. But it won’t wait until tomorrow."
