There is no such thing as unrealized potential

and nothing ever goes wrong

In my last newsletter, I asked myself a question:

“Am I hopeful that we will reinvent our civilization to handle the existential threats facing us?”

This is difficult to answer! I feel extremely hopeful, spry, super inspired by something these days… but somehow it isn’t connected to our likelihood of surviving the coming catastrophes, individually or as a species. I am not sure that is still a useful way to think about our circumstance, in any case.

I find hope often irritates me. When I think of hope, I recall the 2008 Obama campaign based on “hope and change.” Once in office, he quickly betrayed the hopes of his progressive base. He pandered to Wall Street, accelerated fracking, and perpetuated various horrific military adventures. Without a firm deadline, hope often seems a selling technique, a postponement device. A way to kick the can down the road.

Hope reminds me of should, another word I find suspect. Whenever someone tells me they should do something, I cringe a bit. Should is the word we use for anything we don’t want to do while feeling some vague guilty compulsion to do it anyway. If you feel you should do something, you probably shouldn’t, and most likely you won’t.

Hope forfeits the present for the future. We gaze toward something better up ahead, via our deeply distorted concept of linear time, for which we should sacrifice — not do what we really want — now.

Equally problematic, for me, is the word charity. When some wealthy person chooses to donate some of their loot to charity, I can’t help but wonder about the rest of their fortune. This, presumably, was amassed with uncharitable, in other words, selfish or greedy intentions. Why didn’t they act with good intentions and purposes all along, from the get go? If they did — if everybody did — there wouldn’t be any need for charity, no reason to give some money away to assuage a bad conscience.

One idea I find clarifying was originally attributed to Hegel (not sure if he actually wrote or even implied this, but if he did, it could be his pithiest one-liner):

“There is no such thing as unrealized potential.”

This simple idea saves me a great deal of time, energy, and stress. It pushes me to be more present, more complete, with whatever task is at hand. If there is no unrealized potential, then what can I, you, or we actually manifest, now?