To me, potential is a funny thing. As a hopelessly obsessed fan of NBA basketball and a still relatively young Christian who grew up in the church in which I grew up, I've been able to observe a thing or two about potential.
Let's start with basketball.
Anyone who watches the NBA for long enough will see countless front office executives make terrible, terrible mistakes in the name of potential. They'll do it when they draft players, they'll do it when they sign players as free agents, and they'll do it when they make trades for players.
The examples are too numerous to begin to list. Just for the sake of giving you an idea of what I'm talking about, I'll talk very briefly about one Jerome James.
Jerome James spent a very short time doing nothing for the Sacramento Kings before spending a few years doing nothing for the Seattle Supersonics. At the end of his time doing nothing for the Seattle Supersonics (may they rest in peace - the team has since moved to Oklahoma City and been tragically renamed the Thunder), Jerome James put up very modest, minimally respectable statistics for eleven playoff games. This was parlayed into a $30+ million guaranteed contract.
Jerome James has played in 90 games in the four seasons since - out of a possible 328. Some of those games were missed because of injury. A large number of them were missed because Jerome James just plain isn't any good by NBA standards. Yet $30 million was dished out to this guy in the name of potential - after he had already been playing in the NBA for five years.
But the real guy I want to talk about in regards to potential is Tim Thomas.
Among many NBA fans, Tim Thomas is seen as one of the bigger wastes of potential in recent NBA history. When he was a little younger, Tim Thomas was seen as an intriguing combination of size and skill. He's about 6'10" and generally more mobile than other players his size, with a pretty good shot from long range.At one point, Tim Thomas showed some promise in a playoff series after playing in the NBA for five years (sound familiar?) and was rewarded with a huge contract worth about $66 million. He never really got much better. A few years into his big contract, Tim Thomas was still a big player who was generally more mobile than other players his size, with a pretty good shot from long range.
There's a difference in the way people talk about Jerome James and the way people talk about Tim Thomas. Jerome James was just a stupid mistake - he was never good, played about average for a few games, and then continued not to be good. But Tim Thomas? People will tell you that Tim Thomas was a waste of potential - that he could have been something more than he was, but he blew it.
To be fair, I should tell you that Tim Thomas was generally regarded as an uninspired player - a fact that might suggest that he actually could have become considerably better if not for lack of intrinsic motivation. But realistically? Before his big contract, Tim Thomas was a fairly mobile forward with good touch from long range. Five years after he signed his big contract, he was still a fairly mobile forward with good touch from long range.
In regards to Tim Thomas and potential, my point is this: at some point, though people saw the same thing in front of them, people stopped saying that Tim Thomas had potential to be something better than what he was. He went through years as what was pretty much the exact same player - but at some point Tim Thomas's potential was exhausted.
So with Tim Thomas, potential was there when people decided it was there, and it became wasted when people decided it was wasted. Potential was whatever was in the best interest of the people perceiving it. It was justification for a contract offer. It was the thing that was wasted, allowing critics to be right and to show they knew everything about how a guy's career was panning out.
Now, that whole church thing...
I grew up in (and still am quite connected to) a church where people talk a lot about "the plans God has" for someone's life. This concept of God having a preference in the way someone's life works out interacts with people's perception of potential in strange ways.
When I was a little younger (maybe around the end of high school or the beginning of my college career), lots of adults around church were really excited about my potential. I'm not exactly sure what convinced them of it or what they wanted it to look like, but they were excited about it. They were convinced that I was going to accomplish great and meaningful things in my life (I suppose that whether or not I have or will is partially a question of definition).
Eventually, I stopped attending college (and not because of any kind of graduation). That'll have a certain effect on people's opinions about potential.
When I was still attending college, potential was about things I would eventually do - for a time I studied to become an English teacher. Now that I am not currently attending college, potential is about things I am currently doing - about my involvement in ministry and the places it is leading me.
I think part of it has to do with the fact that I'm 26 now. 26 is a lot different than 19 or 20.
I've also noticed that "potential" and "God's plan" become very different things (at least from what I've seen at my church) when dealing with older people. In my time at my church, I've seen some middle-aged people experience "potential" and "God's plan" in different ways. I've seen some middle-aged people confused about the direction of their life or unhappy about their position in life. This resulted in a lot of people around them talking about "God's plan" or about these people's "potential" as what could also just be seen as the most apparent and practical course of action. The step that would result in the most comfort and security (or the step that would satisfy the greatest number of people's expectations) suddenly becomes "God's plan."
People's opinion of my "potential" (or of "God's plan" in some cases) changed as my life changed, allowing them to avoid being disappointed in me or to avoid seeing a life in which they've invested go in a direction they didn't like. Again, people's definition may have changed in order to be more convenient or self-serving.
I'm not really sure how that (or much of the stuff before it) reads. It's just what happens to be going on in my head at the moment.
When I was a senior in high school, I was in my church's youth choir, directed by a woman named Diana Merriman. She is wonderful. After just a few months of knowing her, she started saying the same thing to me whenever we had some time to talk about our lives:
"Jon Palmer, what are you going to be when you grow up? I'm going to ask you that every time I see you."
This is only loosely related to what I've been writing about, but she didn't ask me what I'm going to do. She asked me what I'm going to be. I like that question much better. Asking me what I'm going to do when I grow up is asking what career decision I'll make to ease people's worries about security. Asking me what I'm going to be? That's an entirely different question.
Plenty of people are concerned about what I'm going to do. I don't blame them. On paper, it looks pretty bad. I'm a 26 year-old without a bachelor's degree who works at a job that makes him just enough money to pay his rent and to eat. What's worse, I'm happier in my current position than I've ever been in any other position. My happiness is much more directly related to the details of my life I didn't just list, the details relating to the person I am becoming.
I am more concerned with what I am going to be. Diana's is the question I think about.
No comments:
Post a Comment