Why am I doing all this? The writing, the art, theatre, inventions – there’s an awful lot of stuff that I do. Why? Is this just ego talking? Do I have a grand scheme? Am I some kind of evil scientist in training? Or is it just the mad scrabbling of an old man desperately trying to leave a legacy behind him? I have no simple answer for this.
Yes, I’m old. And as an older man, without any glittering prizes to show, I do feel the need at some level to leave a mark – to say, ‘I did this!’. I can’t deny that. I think most men in their 50s and 60s start to look back on their lives and try to make sense of it all. Men in their 40s (at least in America) start to panic and do stupid things like having affairs or buying little red sports cars. We generally call this the Mid-Life Crisis. But by your 60th year, you’re supposed to be over all that, right? Some, of course, never quite get beyond that. Thankfully, I got over that bit pretty early. But the need for a legacy? I’ve admittedly been thinking a lot about that in the last several years. But I’ve begun to think it’s more than that.
Ego? Yeah, I’ve got plenty of that. The feeling that I’m better than this, that I have a lot more to offer and that people are going to want to see it – that’s always been at work in my mind. See, since I’m one of those who were recognized as being ‘talented’ from a young age, it was sort of a foregone conclusion that a strong ego would develop as well. Boy, did it ever. I’ve been an intolerable know-it-all for most of my life. It didn’t help that I developed a strong facility for science and math at the same time. I became a boor in a dozen subjects. However, as I’ve gotten older, I got the hint that most people just aren’t interested in the same things I am, and no one likes to be lectured. So, that’s become less of a problem (I hope) than it once was.
Do I have a grand scheme? Not one, but many over the years. And that’s actually been quite a problem for me. You see, though I’ve always had these big ideas, I’ve never had the money or the ability to bring any of them to fruition. Frustrating hardly covers it. In fact, my complete inability to make the world into what I want it to be (single-handedly, might I add), has been a big part of the reason I became delusional. My delusions became more real for me than reality itself, and I wandered the paths of madness for a long time. Far too long. Thankfully, over the last dozen years or so, I have found my way out of the madness, and I have no wish to undo the healing and return to the delusions. The grand schemes have been shelved.
How about seeing myself as some kind of evil overlord or mad scientist? I admit, I share a lot of traits in common with these cartoonish characters – so it’s been tempting. (See my previous blog – “How to Take Over the World” for an idea of how tempting it is.) In the end, I realized I don’t really want to run the world, I just want to change it – preferably for the better. So, there goes the whole ‘evil overlord’ idea. I feel that I would much rather be seen as a ‘Benefactor of Humanity’, but how does one accomplish this feat? And still remain a private person? I am an admitted introvert, after all.
I think I’d kind of like to do Leo da Vinci one better – I want to be seen as a Renaissance Man, but I’d like to have that moniker while I’m still alive. Leo wasn’t really recognized as anything but a really good painter until several hundred years after he died. Sorry, not quick enough for me. The reason da Vinci was not celebrated in his own time is pretty simple – he never got his notebooks published. That means that no one knew he really saw himself as a scientist and a naturalist, and only painted to keep the money coming in. If anyone had seen, let alone understood, the ideas he was working on, the course of human history would have been very different – especially medicine.
I’m not saying that I’m anywhere near as smart as da Vinci (you wanna talk about an ego trip?), but I do have a large range of abilities – so the raw material is there. However, it turns out I’m not nearly as good at most of these things as I always supposed I was, so I have a lot of catching up to do. But I have every hope of making real progress before the end. I just have to work my ass off. This I can do. Is it going to happen overnight? Of course not – that goes straight back to delusional thinking. However, I’ve run across this idea recently: ‘everyone overestimates what they can do in a year’s time, but everyone underestimates what they can do in ten years.’ At my level of health (together with good genetics), I figure I have at least another ten years in me, not counting accidents or catastrophic illness, maybe more. This is the reason I’m working so hard at art and writing so late in the game. It is also why I will pick up and enhance my other skills and make sure that other people know what I’m doing and why. Because I literally have no more time to waste – and everything to gain.
Onward.
bcd