Do Whatever It Takes

Last night at the gym I was lifting weights next to a girl whose shirt happened to catch my attention. Across it were the words, “Do My Best.” Only the words, “My Best,” were scratched out. Underneath it was the phrase, “Whatever it takes.”  So what it meant to say was “Do Whatever It Takes.” Something about what her shirt said reiterated a thought I’d been pondering earlier that day. It had to do with the concept of desperation.

 I got to thinking about all of the desperate moments of my life where, for one reason or another, I found myself doing or saying something irrational and borderline crazy. Whether it was getting so frustrated with a boy that I drove clear to another town to give him a piece of my mind or became so suffocated by my surroundings that I rode dozens of miles away from them on a bicycle with nothing but a granola bar and bladder of water strapped on my back, I seem to continually find myself feeling desperate in life.

Up until now I have usually reflected later on such moments as times of weakness. But something about the words on that girl’s shirt tonight made me consider otherwise.

Growing up, you are always told to do your best, and that as long you do that, the outcome is irrelevant. But I have experienced just enough in life to realize by now that your best is often still not good enough. And perhaps more importantly, you should never consider your best as good enough. Giving just your best is sort of like keeping yourself in your own little comfort zone all of the time. Once you know you’ve given your best at something, you stop working at it because you figure there’s nothing left to do. But just as the night is darkest before the dawn, I believe one’s greatest accomplishments and gains in life often come when you push just passed your best.....when you find yourself in a desperate place.

All species of life on earth are hard wired with some type of survival instinct…humans especially. And no matter how difficult life becomes at times and how strong the desire is to give up, there is always that little feeling in our gut that reminds us that we do still actually want to go on living. It is a feeling of desperation. But I think that instinct has the potential to go beyond just keeping us alive. I think that if we can learn to tap into it correctly, we can use it to make us better and stronger people who work harder at everything we do.

When you choose to participate in a feat of physical endurance like a marathon or triathlon, giving your best will not see you through to the end of the finish line. You have to want to accomplish that goal so badly that you push yourself beyond your best into weeks and months of training where physical pain and exhaustion are constant. And the harder you work, the more desperate you become at the thought of failure, so you continue to do “whatever it takes” to prepare your body for the event and to not quit when you’re right in the middle of it.

When you’re in a relationship with someone that you feel is nearing its end point, you think about how tired you are of working at the same things without progress and how just ending it would bring you peace finally. Sometimes relationships do need to end. But too often, people end them without putting up a respectable amount of fight for them. You helped create the relationship initially and worked to hold it together for a while…..why give up on it so easily when things get a little rocky or complicated? Married couples that are fortunate enough to celebrate 50^th and 60^th wedding anniversaries certainly don’t reach those milestones by giving their best. They reach them by doing whatever it takes to hold their relationship together in hard times---because thinking of the alternative leaves them feeling too desperate.

When you are striving towards achieving a difficult dream, like I am with my writing, giving your best will never get you there. Doing my best with my writing would involve getting a journalism or creative writing degree and then applying for some run-of-the-mill reporter job at the local paper or as a college professor where I’d have time to work on my novel at night. But I’m trying to tap into the “do whatever it takes” motto by working 4 or 5 jobs some weeks…sometimes without pay…sometimes without byline recognition. I hound editors at newspapers and magazines until they get so sick of hearing from me that they assign me a small piece.  And the further along I get with my dream, the more desperate I get to keep moving closer.

The point is that giving your best, no matter what area of life it is in, will take you far but not as far as you are capable of. Reaching your full potential and accomplishing great things requires pushing yourself beyond where you think you are capable of going. It means wanting something bad enough that you will do whatever it takes to make it happen. And to do that, you must first taste desperation.