faust

It might be something as simple as money. Or it might be something more elusive live love or happiness, even fulfillment. Whatever it is, we all have something inside of us that we want, desire, or need. Each of those is something that we thing will change the tides of our fortune and create a more positive experience of our life. Nothing is free in this world, and just as there are two sides to every coin, there is a sacrifice that must be made for what you want.

Literature and pop culture has referenced the notion of making a deal with the devil so often that it has become familiar to us in the form of Goethe’s Faust or as a more contemporary example, the film Devil’s Advocate (Keanu Reeves,  Al Pacino 1997).  In each the story goes that a man has made some irrevocable deal with Satan himself to achieve great worldly success but in exchange he must sign his soul over to him. This present a very extreme example of a compromise we are faced with everyday; doing things we don’t want to do, to have something that we want.

A lot of people want to be rich, but a lot of people also do not want to work so hard. Assuming that there was a direct correlation to how hard you worked and your wealth it might be easier to put in the effort, but in the world we live in we have to deal with a risk factor that all our work might not actually pay off. For others the dream is to get married or be in loving relationships, but they often find it hard to stay patient or accepting of the people they are in relationship with. We find that so many of these swords are double edged, it is as if the door way to your dreams is at the end of a hallway of nightmares. So the question becomes how bad do you want it.

For those that are absolutely desperate, ambitious or relentless, making a deal with the devil seems like a great proposition. Their focus is much simpler and their goals are much clearer. Yet this is not how we are all wired. When we are faced with the challenge of seeing through a persons faults to e reminded of why we love them. Sometimes it is not our inability that gets in our way, but our desire. Perhaps we can not see the future value in light of the sacrifice.

There is too much in the way of idealism for us to let it hold us back in the real world. It is one thing to always be pushing against the accepted paradigm, it is another thing to let it paralyze you. There is the artist who will leave a painting incomplete because of the inability to find the perfect shade of blue, but we have to ask ourselves if the compromise is worth it to wait. Share nothing, or share something?

If we are unwilling to take a crumby high paying job to get where we want financially we can’t blame anyone for the lack of funds in our bank account. We have the obligation to live in the here and the now, while balancing our perspective on the future.

The secret to success is realizing that it may not end being as perfect as you dreamt it, but tomorrow is yours to shape and you will never realize your dreams if you don’t take a chance at it. Being too attached to the perfect state in which they exist in your imagination is the perfect way to ensure that your dreams remain figments of it.