Monday, April 23, 2007

Why the Natural

I have always had an affinity to the movie, the Natural. I’ve never read the book. But the movie pulled at my soft points. A story about a young man who has immense talent and promise as a baseball player but because of immaturity and circumstance is not able to actualize it.

So after a brief encounter with stardom, he vanishes and is not heard from again until he is in his mid 30s. At that point, he has redeveloped his skills but is a middle age player who no one gives much a look.

But something remarkable happens. He is able to demonstrate the talents and skills he has always had. In the course of doing so, he reunites with his childhood love and explains to her that he had lost his confidence, thus explaining his disappearance.

I identify with that story because I feel at the beginning of my professional career, I was at a position where one could say that I had a certain talent and promise and the future opportunities seemed limitless. But things happened. I was suffering from depression. I got sidetracked. I was immature, emotionally dependent, and the place from where I could have fulfilled my promises was gone. I had left it, maybe even unceremoniously.

I never really understood the wisdom of stepping back and assessing the situation. I never really stopped to think of what type of relationship I wanted to be in, or the type of dynamic I wanted to create for my life.

If I did think about the life I wanted to create, it was more material boundaries, not the emotional connections.

So here I am now, in my mid 30s, with the products of that thinking with the material boundaries that I imagined, but not necessarily the emotional connections. I am still suffering from depression, and am not able to have the fulfillment that I want in my relationship, in my life, and I ask why.

Will there be a point where I will begin exhibiting the talent and potential that I once had. Will something remarkable happen to me? It already has with the birth of my child but something that unlocks my personality, unlocks me to be myself. Something that unlocks me from being infantile and dependent.

Something that lets me thrash the ball of life with my own Wonderboy, a release of all the anger and frustration and disappointment and emotion.

I yearn to be at peace. I long to have my gifts, talent, ability, and creativity freed
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