I Want To Be Happy When I Grow Up

“I cannot teach anyone anything, I can only make them think.” - Socrates

Motivation comes from within. Be it money or satisfaction or self-realization. There is no extrinsic motivation.

Tall claims that, but I stand by it because I know not otherwise. My motivation comes from the ever present something that makes or breaks me do something, anything. Motivation is a result of need, and need is the relative difference between the desired state and the current state. Those are but just words. What do they mean? What does motivation even mean.

The leaves move because there is wind, and because there is wind we can define air. Such is the case with motivation. A being exhibiting a goal oriented behaviour of often classified as someone who has motivation. There was a chuck in my life where I did not know why I did what I did neither did I know what was it that would make it know it, nor did I know what I really wanted to do. General judgement was lack of a purpose that resulted in this limbo state. External goals like project delivery, vehicle maintenance, a cousins wedding gave a little meaning to the otherwise black hole of existence. It was futile to discuss for being mistaken as complaint and it was unrewarding to dwell upon, it only went deeper. But the survival did not stop. Physiological needs and safety needs, as Maslow terms them, kept me alive though the growth needs were the ones claiming deficiency internally. Finding a purpose by itself needs motivation and motivation can be found in many ways, as I have come to know. An otherwise simple human in our lives can become motivating in a moment of truth, an experience in a train on a rainy day could be as motivating as an efficiently run self transformation course. It all needs the eye for it. The craving for it, which comes from within, not from outside where the comparative nature of human existence results in desiring a state in which someone else lives in, to gain significance, relevance and status. It is meaningless, to me.

The search, the ever present halo of unpredictability in who I am, to myself and the others around me, is motivating to me. It keeps me from swaying from the path I have chosen naturally for me and it helps me from getting too bogged down when the world deems me unfit for it. But is this motivation enough. How long does it hold? And how strong will it hold? There needs to be something more, is what I have always thought of. Something to get, understand and defend. Something that will make me feel, act and think at the same time, without me noticing it happening. That came when I realised I had a power. A super power. The power to heal pain, to end suffering by keeping my mindfulness and holding on to my strength. It’s a power because it has to ability to change the emotional state of any being around. I realised this power when animals reacted to my thoughts, expressed theirs in ways which I could comprehend. I realised this when humans who I interacted with, with this intention reacted by showing or saying that talking to me was relieving and gave the clarity  they were looking for. This power, the realization and its use, gives me the motivation to find the channels to use this in. this power makes me wake up and go for the smaller goals in life, the exams and deadlines of the world, for it has taught me that when ready, this power will be the all of it, one day.

What gave Charles Chaplin his motivation? The Applause? The Smiles? The Satisfaction? The feeling of transcendence when he wrote and performed? I don't know, its got nothing to do with any of those is what I think. It's got more to do with him realising the effect of his thoughts that his productions.