Brick Wall.

So after piano lessons this morning, I was feeling pretty useless. There's no point in explaining; all you need to know is that I barely practiced all week (not unlike all other weeks) and consequently had a fruitless lesson that my parents had to pay a lot of money for. I was tired and discouraged, so in the middle of Debussy's Arabesque...my mind wandered off and stumbled upon this question: is failure the result of giving up, or do we give up after failure?

Here is a quote from Randy Pausch's Last Lecture: "The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out; the brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don't want it badly enough. They're there to stop the other people."

But what happens when you put in effort, and more effort, and more effort, and then like a telescoping series - excuse the calc reference - the result is...nil? Well I'll tell you what happens. First, you get disappointed, but soon this disappointment transforms into a resentful determination that motivates you to try even harder than the first time. But this time, when you're met with failure again, it feels twice as bad. Now you go through all the motions and you pretend you don't care, but deep down you still do. But alas - failure again. So you wonder, "If I'm just going to fail again, why bother trying anymore?" And it all goes downhill from there.

I feel like a shell. Remember when every detail of the world amazed us and we couldn't stop asking "why?" (Erik Erikson's Stage 3)? Well I don't know what happened but somewhere along the line I lost sight of what I actually wanted. Now I'm just your average zombie, striving for perfect grades, not sleeping, and worst of all - not caring.

I can't want something badly enough if I don't know what I want. Does this mean I'll never get past the brick wall?