Recently I came upon a quote by the Swiss psychologist, Carl Jung: “most men spend their lives in shoes that are too small for them”.
The point he was seeking to emphasise was the extent to which Fear held most guys by the nuts in its determination to keep them ‘small’.
And let’s admit
it – it’s a time of intense frustration when you’re a teenager with your first real urges to take risks …. and this isn’t only limited to getting your end away regularly and with increasing satisfaction. At some point, usually in your late teens, you become aware of what you might call an ‘urge for Life’, an inner driving force to grow and have a deeper knowledge of ‘what it’s all about’.
But then, all too often it stops or becomes weaker and weaker until lethargy joins Fear in its determination to make a mockery of what was once called ‘Vitalism’ to deter you from venturing into the unknown.
Somewhere along the line there’s an intuitive realisation in most guys that to become the ‘Ideal Man’ requires that we summon the courage to ‘stand alone’, become the intrepid explorer of ‘darkest Africa’, up the Amazon or amongst the tombs of the desert places.
Even today the idea of finding yourself alone at the furthest point along the shore is capable of sparking the exhilaration that one might be at a place where no man has ever trodden… that’s before you discover the Coca-Cola can embedded between two rocks.
Today it seems more and more difficult to create something that would be meaningful to others for the first time … though of course that isn’t strictly true. All you really have to do is recognise that its basic requirement is that you ‘stand alone’ by setting an example yourself.
Increasingly, I believe that one thing which is truly evil is the proliferation of items of distraction, ‘toys’ whose only objective is to ‘fill in time’ being quite devoid of any meaningful purpose.
It takes time to write a book – time to write it but, more importantly, time to create it in the mind as something that only you can do. But to do that you have to ‘think big’, that what you’re about to offer may have the power to enrich the lives of others who are inspired by the new thoughts you’ve presented.
The ‘small shoes’ to which Jung refers are the books that were never written, partly because of a lack of
encouragement to believe you had something new to say, or maybe old stuff newly presented in a different light.
As we say in the WMD Guide, to fit the shoes which are truly the right size for who you could become requires the Balls of Courage, Action, Risk and Determination. Try it and write the book. By setting an example you’ll be doing many of us a favour.