Nicholas Higgins 14/06/2020

The Tyranny of Potential

‘The carrot of happier tomorrow has smoothly replaced the carrot of salvation in the next world. In both cases, the present is always under the heel of oppression’, R. Vangeim, The Revolution of Everyday Life

We’re all told we will be ‘content’ when we achieve our potential. But when does this happen exactly? I for one have never met anybody who says they’ve achieved their potential. So why do we chase after it with so much zeal? It’s surely like sticking a carrot above a treadmill, setting it at 10.0 and running, interminably.

This is the nature of potential I suppose. It’s a process, not an end. Something you rarely meet, but continuously pursue. This is good thing, and having something to work towards makes life worth living. Just as the seedling develops into a beautiful flower, so do we have a duty to grow and mature. For the classicists, this meant developing virtue. To use every day to become a more courageous, disciplined, industrious, independent and loving person. 

Yet the Greeks and Romans also spoke in the language of moderation; ‘the greatest hindrance to living is expectancy, which depends upon tomorrow and wastes today’, so said Seneca. Today, however, we prefer uncompromising fanaticism. We are spellbound by the magic of potential. We’re barraged on all sides to have one eye always ‘expectant’ of the future. 

Nursery primes us for primary school, primary school preps us for 11+ entrance exams, secondary school gets us into university. Even if you don’t go to university it won’t stop there. More job interviews, more looming decisions. More, ‘where do you see yourself in a few years time?’ More, ‘what career path would you like to follow?’ In almost every stage of life we’re encouraged to think of a different time to that which we’re in.

This sort of conditioning primes us to be eternally dissatisfied. Does your thought life go something like this: I will be happy when I pass my exams, I will be happy when I get a job. I will be happy when I get promoted, I will be happy when I find a meaningful relationship, I will be happy when I retire to my vineyard in the south of France. Far from reaching the ever elusive carrot of potential, ‘contentment’, we’re left frustrated and dissapointed, always expecting more.

Thus, this day, this present moment, is left to escape before our eyes. The present has been disenchanted, robbed and epmtied of its very own potential. Constant anticipation replaces appreciation. What is - this present moment in life - is put down in favour of what could be. Because you never know, there could be something better just ahead!  Whatever is actually happening today is already so yesterday, and the only true excitement is the next big thing, the next lover, the next holiday, the next project, the next promotion, the next meal. Potential has morphed into a greedy monster, never satisfied, always wanting more. 

This points to another sad fact. Where classical potential was thought of as something born from the interior need for personal growth, contemporary potential is almost always external. It’s odiously dependent on activities such as sexual adventure, travel and consumerism. Today it refers to the superficial froth of the material world. Your best body, a successful career, or some talent that should bring you fame and fortune (31% of American teenagers sincerely believe they will be famous).

These things are themselves pure potential. Clothes have enormous potential to make us more beautiful and we expect they will improve our status or image. This is what thrills us, not the almost always disappointing shirt that lay unworn in the cupboard. We expect holidays to be inspirationally exotic, those blue waters and sunny skies will just be pure bliss. Only to find upon arrival it’s just another place, with sky, buildings, people and trees, and we come there with our same old hang ups and anxieties. We think of the career ladder as the great dispenser of money and status; the reality is that it’s a fantastically unsatisfying, ultimately doomed, quest for self-perfection. They follow an upward path to some ever vanishing point above you.

What ‘potential’ there is in the external world almost always come up short. We’re just led further down the rabbit hole of continual dissatisfaction.

What if we imagined potential not as some future goal, but a rich, joyful life lived presently? Perhaps a rich, joyful life is not one that exists in a potential future fantasy world, but right here, right now. As Emily Dickinson penned two centuries ago, ‘Forever - is composed of Now’s’. So let go over a grasping for what has not happened yet; ‘To what goal are you straining? What are you looking at? The whole future lies in uncertainty…’

Maybe the point of life is to give up certainty and embrace life’s beautiful uncertainty.