jakorte's blog

Many times, most times, always; I have felt the overwhelming desire to change some one thing just so I know I’m still alive and in the game. I’ve felt restless, unfulfilled, without insightful direction. My current emotional twister has looped me back around to what on the surface seems like the same point I started out on four plus years ago. Still, it’s a little different: like a recurring dream with slight detail blurs. Some new clues catch my imagination, some old clues are clearer.

Two decades ago I had a firm list of achievements. A gold record was my pinnacle. The implication of reaching a pinnacle – the highest point of decoration – implies conclusion, fulfillment; nothing more to seek, to strive towards, or to yearn for. Then I earned one.

To quote Maya Angelou, “Achievement brings its own anticlimax.” Much along the line of other climaxes in our lives, accomplishments drive new perspectives. With near immediacy, we wonder what happens next. How soon we can do it again? How can we make it more spectacular? We hungrily plot to ride the pleasure wave longer. My logical succession was fairly easy, fairly fast: official name-in-ink album credits, scaling a double platinum summit, creating a viable production company. Each successful tick off my list sent me on the next goal. I neither appeased nor eased the lust.

It seems to me a common miss-notion that death is a glorious, streets-of-gold, end-all achievement. Merriam’s Dictionary defines achievement as: the act of achieving, accomplishment, a result gained by effort, a great heroic deed. In these terms, it becomes clear that our arrival at Heaven’s destination cannot be considered achievement. In gaining access, we are not required to make an effort or perform great heroic deeds. That was done for us. We are simply required to believe, which settles last week’s question. For myself, I redefine: Death is simply dying. Passing is eternal living. No measure of gold measures up to that.