by Ed Bolian
There is not a prescription to offer for how to find your “thing” and this is not meant to be a self-help book. Writing this has been a personal celebration for me to look back on how my perspective evolved with respect to this quest. The growth was the prize. I have heard a lot of motivational speakers preach ideas of working at what you love, visualizing success, and staying dedicated to your dreams.
That is all well and good but that is not what got me here. I do those things but they would never have led me to this as a goal. This happened because I let myself be exposed to it early on and I never gave any credence to the multitude of reasons it could not or should not be done. Due to my general lack of respect for rules and boundaries, that realization came fairly easily for me but it may be a challenge to some. Push through it.
The obstacles in this pursuit served to show how everything that makes me broken as a person actually made me qualified for this. The unrelenting subtle gravity pulling me toward it never let go for an entire decade. Things could stand in the way and pull me in other directions for a short time but the tidal movement was toward the reality of this happening some day.
My preference for improvisation over structure, my indignance to authority and my unique moral interpretation of the world, my love of cars, my faith in the unknowable, and even the psychopathy that desensitizes me; it all came together to make me a person who could contend.
The two people standing by my side in the Portofino parking lot are a testament to the uniqueness of this type of pursuit. Along the way, I found an endless line of people who found it interesting or fun. They offered to help, to discuss, and even to dream alongside me. When it came time to act though, it was not right. It was not their thing. At the point where procedure shifted from fun and spirited to not letting anything stand in the way, the wheat and the chaff separated.
I ended up with one guy who wanted to go on a road trip and one that just wasn’t doing anything that weekend. The experience was completely different for them and I absolutely love them both for it. It truly would not have happened without them. If Dave knew all of the reasons to slow down like I did he would not have maintained and improved upon the pace. If Dan had built the car with me he would have used it all in the theory in which we intended it rather than adapting it to our immediate needs as he saw them.
When the rubber literally met the road I found the planning was the last thing I had to let go of in order to reach for victory in a final push. If I had held out for a perfectly functioning car and the team that I was expecting, I would still be dreaming while procrastinating. Whether you believe that it is God, the universe, or just random coincidence pulling you in the direction of your opus it will quickly become clear that it is not a destination that we get to drive to on our own accord. For me, this is a God thing.
Even though there were years of a gravitational pull toward pursuance, success was neither guaranteed nor likely. The wheels of the slot machine were entirely outside of my control. Dressed in priestly garb, an inebriated Dean Martin joked to Sammy Davis Jr. that God was their co-pilot in Cannonball Run. The astronomically improbable opportunity we had to complete our drive in such a staggering time reinforced to me God was with us in a much more serious sense. If I had tarried any longer in the rental business, married the wrong girl, pursued other selfish ambitions, given into the temptation of divorce, or refused to glorify Him through my incremental successes - I would not have done it. My God is faithful.
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
Jeremiah 29:11 (NIV)
My story is one of alternating between seasons of pushing as hard as I could with disregard for the risks and the seasons of accepting advice and yielding to the direction where I needed to go.
Basketball gave way to business
Ivy League gave way to cheap local school and disposable funds
Journalism waned and Supercar Rentals was born
I gave my own selfishness the back seat and let myself love Megan
She showed me when it was time to let Supercar Rentals go and to go to the dealership
Those sacrifices eventually created the resolve to chase a dream that had always been there in a stronger but more responsible way
A balanced life finally gave way to the permissive trigger to do whatever it takes to make the last push
And even then, my team and my ideas had to yield to the people that God put in my path at just the right time.
It is my choice to view it in that way. I could take ownership and say that I meant for it all to happen just as it did but that would be a lie. The ebb and flow of preference versus “being along for the ride” is what made this whole thing so useful for personal growth. At times I rowed upstream, at times downstream. The wind was at my back and also blowing in my face. At times the ground crumbled, other times it was the only thing holding me up. Somehow, though, I never stopped getting closer.
Winning was undoubtedly the icing on a long baked cake. It was one of the life moments where the payoff was exactly as good as you dreamt it might be. The true reward, though, was the road that took me there. It was a crutch when I needed to limp through the harder times in my life. It was the hope for something great when everything else tried to pull me down. It stayed there as a beacon up ahead just reminding me it was there while I was busy with the rest of life. Crucially, when I badly needed a win, it was still right there. When the beauty of life comes through the challenges that we face, our job is to simply make sure that we are focused on the game and that we end up doing what we need to. The first flush after finally getting around to fixing that endlessly running toilet would never be as fulfilling if it hadn’t spent so much time tormenting you in the background.
Perspective is critical. What we need to do is try as hard as we can and then let the pressure off for a moment. Let the world around settle as it will. Take a break, appreciate how far we have come. Then we can get ready to push again.
I praise my God for every step of the path that led me to Cannonball and for holding me in His hand to bring me through it. My two sincerest prayers are that my newborn son come to know and love that same God the way that I do and that one day he will find a “thing” of his own that he can strive to conquer. If one day he gets to cry the same tears of joy I did as I stood on that dock overlooking the Pacific Ocean in the middle of the night on October 20, 2013 then he will know he found it. On that fine day, there will be two happiest people in the world.
Now go find yours!
