All The Things I'm Not

I keep thinking that I ought to be someone else.

I shouldn’t have squandered my youthful potential trying to be Woody Allen (or was it Phyllis Diller?); I should have buckled down and gone to law school so that by now I’d be doing something more worthwhile with my life than writing essays no one will ever read or at least I’d be busy enough that I wouldn’t have time to worry that I wasn’t doing something of value to humanity and the world.

The problem is that I never really stuck with one thing; I always got bored or distracted and jumped to the next diversion before I’d let the original play itself out fully. For instance, if only I’d kept at standup comedy in the 1980s, I could be at least as famous as Carrot Top (and certainly far less annoying.) Or if I had stayed in the corporate training world in the 1990s, I’d probably have my own company by now (or at least a company car.) Heck, if only I’d held on to my paper route in the 1970s, I’d more than likely own a good part of the Pittsburgh Press (even if it has gone out of business).

The point is (if there is one) I’m not all I can be. (Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing; I could be a quadriplegic after all, but it’s no great loss that I’m not.)

If only I wasn’t such a self-centered neurotic I could probably make a positive difference in the world, but that, of course, would require that me to direct my attention to a cause outside my own little life, a step that would represent a rejection of the one thing that has been consistent in my behavior after all these years: being a self-centered neurotic.

With that in mind, therefore, it seems I couldn’t be someone else; and if “ought implies can,” then I’m off the hook morally, too. Whew!