Garden State

Yesterday I helped a friend and her family move to another house, so I'm a little tired and feeling rather laid-back. Fortunately, this is perfect for this message, for what I learned over the week.

Last night I watched a movie called Garden State. It was an interesting movie, written by, directed by, and starring Zach Braff. (Depending on how current your tastes are, you might recognize him as the actor who plays JD in Scrubs.)

It's about a guy who has (unnecessarily) been on one form of lithium or another for the past ten years or so of his life. The movie starts when he makes a trip back home (first time in nine years) and leaves all his medication behind. Without getting too much into the plot, the point of the film is that you can either waste your life trying to make everything perfect before your begin it (which will never happen), or you can just take what you're given, do the best you can with it, and let the chips fall where they may.

So many times I see talented people who could really do something with their lives sitting around doing nothing, resting their laurels on one kind of excuse or another. Ultimately it always comes down to one thing: they're afraid of failing. In the bitterest of ironies, they value their lives so much that they waste their lives in preparation, afraid that they'll ruin their lives if they (as Van Halen puts it) go ahead and jump.

I'm sure you've heard this a thousand times before, but it's true: no matter what you think, you'll never know what might have been if you don't even try. You can't win unless you run the race. Even if you lose, take some comfort in the words of Mick Jagger: "You can't always get what you want, but if you try, sometimes you'll find you get what you *need.*" (Emphasis mine.)

Of course, if that were the *whole* point of Garden State, then it would be little more than a quirky feel-good film. What really made it a classic (it is a classic, right?) was the subtext that ran alongside the primary point, counterbalancing the motivational material with a bit of staid wisdom.

There's a character in Garden State, Dave, who invents quiet velcro and cashes out. He lives in a gigantic house with a HUGE fireplace. He drives around his house in a little dune buggy, it's that big. As Dave puts it, "I've never been so bored in my entire life."

See, Dave had a dream. Dave pursued that dream. Dave achieved that dream. He'd be considered successful by most people. He jumped. The problem is that it turned out that he didn't really want what he'd thought he'd wanted. Really what he wanted (and what I think most people want) was fun, variety, and friendship. Instead he's stuck with a big house, sitting around doing nothing while all his friends are out working. Ironically, his friends end up having more fun than him. They live fuller lives. Why? Because they are satisfied with what they have.

My friend, if you aren't satisfied with your life right now, as it is, you will never be satisfied with it when you finally find material success. Real success is more about who you become than what you gain. The thing about wealth is that it does nothing to solve whatever issues you're carrying around. You can never run from yourself, you know?

So yes, pursue your dreams, but in pursuing those dreams do not lose sight of who you are and who you want to be. Be wary of dreams that have to do with living large. A lot of the time an excess of material possessions will rob you of the very reasons you wanted those things in the first place. Yes, you get a bigger house, but what good is it if you're always working to pay it off?

As far as my business goes, my MySpace account was deleted last week. I am now promoting FriendBlastr from eleven separate accounts to avoid being cut off like that again. Also, my laptop is dead. I am typing this on my friend's laptop. Consequently, it is likely that I will find out this week just how autonomous FriendBlastr truly is.

Good luck with your ventures.