A Delicate Destiny
To take what is rightfully yours
There’s a common joke around Washington that every Senator, when they close their eyes to rest at night, imagines themselves as President. Unlike the House, which has nearly five hundred bodies stuffed into a chaotic chamber, the Senate is different. It’s the older, more sophisticated brother of the legislative branch—the cherished offspring of the Founding Fathers meant to act as a backstop to petty politics. Still, though, even as a Senator you are merely one of a hundred people. Your power exists inside the margins, notching important but ultimately small wins on legislation directed by the President. Even with the prestige of the Senate, you are still expected to fall in line with your party. You are, even in the oh-so-important Senate, another pawn in a chess game happening inside 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
It makes perfect sense, therefore, that under the quiet of night a Senator would dream of something bigger. A world where they no longer take orders, but make them. A world where they are the ones controlling the pawns—moving the pieces across the board in a way the current President, no matter the party, never could. How amazing it would be! Their success, which of course would be guaranteed, would be coterminous with the success of the country. America needed someone who knew the system from within but could lead it from above—how fantastic was it that they fit the bill? They were the savior! This was more than a daydream—this was the future! Our future!
As the sun rises over the Potomac, and with it the realities of party politics, these dreams recede back into the subconscious of a Senator. When asked what they think about a given issue they instinctively defer to their party leadership. After all, in the grand scheme of things, the pawn is at least a piece on the board. To risk losing that—to march across the board for salvation—would risk complete irrelevance. Your gamble could gift you nothing but a lowly spot on cable news, arguing about the issues you once had a vote on. A permanent stench of ‘Former’ on your prestigious status of Senator. No, those dreams would stay hidden until the next night when you can, once again, allow yourself to see your destiny.
I, of course, am not a Senator. I do not know if at the end of a long career in the body, if these men and women wish they had acted different—if they wish they had tried, even once, for the job they dreamed of. Was their dance with destiny subverted by their fear of failure? Or was it that this dance never existed? That they were only ever to be one of a hundred in a branch of more than five hundred. One has a choice, then, between two markedly different paths.
The first is one of rationalization. The beyond is no longer believable. You point to the myriad obstacles, both real and imagined, to feed the fear you hold inside. You have a family! A career! A good life! The glory of winning suddenly becomes an indictment of those who did not back away from the beyond, who saw the unwritten future as theirs to write. A hollow humility envelops your sense of self—built with a gratitude you do not feel for a life you have not lived. Often this is brought out with a manufactured appreciation for the small things in life, as if enjoying pleasant weather or a day with family is only possible by surrendering your individuality. This is, of course, a tragedy.
The great lie that a life of comfortability aims to convince you of is to equate positive feelings with meaningful ones. In it lies an argument that the stressors of life are manufactured and that only love—however vague that may be—is the only feeling worth chasing. The logical extension of this view is so evidently false that it begs a closer examination.
Humanity, it would have to be argued, has somehow escaped the apparently undeniable meaning of simple pleasures and set up a system of social structures that, by some miracle, has survived thousands of years of human evolution. How has the magnetism of power and prestige characterized every society in every time in human history? Instead, could it be that the very core of our humanity is not some reductive animalistic instinct for what we are born into and instead a true desire to be more than one human could ever hope to be? I would argue it is the latter. The true contentness that so many claim to have is fundamentally impossible without first attempting to impress yourself upon our world.
Let us return to our imaginary has-been Senator. At first, it would seem impossible for a figure who achieved so much to ever tread this path of resignation. There is some truth to this—becoming a Senator is far from easy no matter your background. My point is not to say that any true appreciation of your life is impossible without exhausting yourself completely. Instead, I would argue that the barometer for meaning is entirely relative to the individual. Our Senator may view the seat itself as the greatest honor and, outside of the occasional daydream, feel their life to be truly fulfilled. I would never attempt to argue that such a feeling is wrong morally or empirically.
Most of us all fall on this first path. A few, like our Senator, do find their potential to be realized in the minute. Most, however, can never know for certain whether this path was truly the one they were meant for. There can be no certainty as to if they could have lived fuller and done more. Yes, ultimately this life is one that an individual chooses, and yes, this life is comparatively harmless. I do not hold pity for these people, and nor should you, because this very sympathy only ensnares a stalled life to remain inert. On a group level, this is a tragedy that demands an urgent pivot, but as for the individual, it is nothing to be mourned. Life moves on.
Thankfully, there is another path. That is the life of a relentless, painful, but ultimately triumphant conviction in your individuality. The future operates outside the power paradigms of our current reality—it is both remarkably amorphous and strikingly tangible. By anchoring your purpose onto not just one goal, but to an unbreakable belief that you are meant to be something, you can accomplish the absolute. It asks of you nothing else but a true faith in yourself.
Imagine, now, that when our Senator lays their head to rest they dream not of how good of a President they could be, but how certain it is that they will be President. This can feel pedantic at first—on the surface the thought itself has barely changed. Herein lies the real power of a conviction of your place in the future, and the undeniable superiority of this second path. The thought itself—the certainty—drinks from the same belief of capabilities that allowed a Senator to become a Senator in the first place. This is not to be mistaken with ambition which, while undoubtedly important, can lack a certain security in one’s place in the world. If you live only off ambition, you will live only in the current and the past. It will chain you to the material and prevent you from racing into the future at the pace it demands.
If the first path is marked by resignation and reconciliation with defeat, this second path is instead one of a necessary, arguably unwarranted, conviction. Conviction is the engine that powers anything of substance. It is a remarkable, undeniable, and impenetrable shield from numbness. It invites itself into every relationship you have, every title you hold, and every decision you make. Once you choose this conviction you not only see the fatality of forfeiting what your life can and cannot be, but the true limitless nature of your future. It is yours and only yours to shape, unencumbered by jealousy of others on the same path it focuses the whole of your world into one thing—you. The future looks not like a daunting nightmare hovering over your individual but an invitation to claim what is rightfully yours.
I understand fully that such a statement can be read as some type of naive egotistical view of the world that is bound to fail. It’s true that the line between self-belief and self-delusion is thin and easy to cross. I would counter this, however, by first denying that a life of manufactured pleasure is any less narcissistic than the occasional delusion of grandeur. By resigning your future to others you are thereby signaling just how much you cannot unchain your fear of failure. You cannot dare to proudly stand up and fight for your purpose—so much so that you would rather die a premature death.
Believing you have the potential to be great is a selfless endeavor that protects others from harm. If you believe you are great, if you know are meant to be The One, then you will need an enormous amount of assistance. This is what builds communities from the nation to the neighborhood—one individual willing to bear the burden of failure to provide something better for the group. That is what proves the pain of conviction right even in the most dreadful of setbacks. You know that if you do not claim the future you will allow another to do it for you—and you will live under whatever it is that they create. That is not bravery, or peace, or meaning. It is surrender and capitulation.
The first step to running for President is to believe you can be President. It doesn’t require a Senate seat to believe this future can be yours. I believe I am meant to be something. I know I am. I could assuage your creeping annoyance by pointing to the work I have done or the things I have sacrificed, and maybe that’s the strategically adept move. To be honest, though, my unabated sprint for the future is built off of an inner conviction deeper than any GPA or internship. I want the future for myself because I know that I can have it. I know that the engine in me does not cower from any crowd or any title. I am proud of that because it is not unique to me. I am not rich, I was not born with some innate giftedness. I have fought for what I have and I will fight for that future on the path of conviction. You have that fight too.