Potential
By: Jake Kahana
Tags: Self-awareness, Life Advice, Expectations, Worldviews, Potential

Potential

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Hey friend!

What Will Become of Us?

“Hello, Elmo” Golda says politely as she tosses her red plush friend on top of her doll, already-buckled into the tiny stroller. My daughter keeps adding her toys one by one. An oversized plastic butterfly sits on the table. She picks that up, too. “Come here, Par-par!” which she recently learned means butterfly in Hebrew. And finally, the bath toys. “Alimango!” (Tagalog for crab).

Ok. I’m sharing this story partially to brag about my daughter. I mean, she’s barely two. 3 languages? She’s brilliant, right? Some child prodigy genius.

But I’m also bringing it up because it’s revealing something to me about me. Assuming she’s a genius raises my expectations of her, projecting visions of tutors and extra-curricular classes. College opportunities and career achievements ahead for her. And then I can’t help but match those expectations with how I treat her and guide her learning.

But we do that for anything with potential. A promising stock investment, a job offer at a startup, the fixer-upper house, an up-and-coming neighborhood, an exciting new relationship that could be “the one.” We mentally assign expectations and behave differently in order to guide each one, hoping it lives up to those expectations.

Is that normal? Is that healthy? Is there another way?

So I’m thinking a lot about potential this month. How does projecting these expectations on people and ideas in our lives affect how we treat them, and what is to come of them?

Let’s step up to the plate and see what happens.

“Bags and Boxes” by Ellen Porteus

Falling Short

About 15 years ago, I interned at an ad agency–my first real job out of college. After a particular meeting, one of the senior creative guys told me “someday we’ll work for you.” At the time, he meant it as a compliment. And I took it that way for almost a decade.

I used that vision to motivate me and my career trajectory. But over time, that compliment became unnecessary pressure. I was carrying this potential and it was weighing me down. The compliment was turning into a curse, like I had to somehow pay back this gift I’d been given and meet everyone’s expectations of me.

Potential can be paralyzing.

It’s one of the challenges of making things. Doesn’t really matter what, just the idea of being creative. A song, painting, homemade cookies, starting a new company, a pasta dinner.

In the process of making that thing, one of the earliest and most exciting steps is envisioning what it could be. Imagining the crowd cheering, that first bite right out of the oven, framing and hanging the masterpiece we just started, standing on a TED stage.

We can imagine perfection but because we are human we are incapable of making it. It will always be better in our head than what it is when it comes out.

And then we finish. And inevitably, it falls short.

When so much is expected of us and the work we make, it becomes nearly impossible to meet those expectations. So why should we continue to pursue audacious career goals, have kids, or make ambitious work, knowing they’re likely going to fall short of what we can imagine them to be?