Motivations

What motivates people has always interested me because it answers the question, why?

One can do something for noble reasons and with the best of intentions. Sometimes, everything turns out well. Sometimes, it doesn’t. Disasters happen, and that was never the intention.

Imagine wanting to save the world only to discover that after casting everything aside—family, friends, and all of one’s past—the world never needed saving. It was fine the way it was. The help you thought it needed was only in your mind.

One of my favorite quotes about motivation is from C. S. Lewis:

“History isn’t just the story of bad people doing bad things. It’s quite as much a story of people trying to do good things. But somehow, something goes wrong.”

It is a puzzle. The surface manifestation and the inner core don’t match. We never meant for it to happen, but it did. If that is hard to bear and acknowledge on the inside, it is even harder to discern from the outside looking in.

As a writer, I have learned that the reasons behind others’ actions can only be understood through careful analysis and observation.

Take fame.

In ancient Greece, kleos, which means glory or renown, was widely sought after. A Greek hero earned kleos through great deeds. Earn sufficient kleos, and one’s actions were immortalized in songs to be passed down from generation to generation. In a world of heroes, gods, and goddesses, it was the best “forever” that a mortal could hope for.

Is fame about immortality today?

It is not. Fame now has material value. It also has power. Why?

In 1993, George Gilder formulated a law attributed to Robert Metcalfe and called it Metcalfe’s Law. It posits that the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of a system.

Reflected in that law is the power of the influencer and his or her followers.

The rules and the technological sophistication of the world are different now, but not so the desires of the heart. These haven’t changed despite our attempts to conceal them.

We all would like a little immortality, I think … but if that should prove impossible, power and influence have always been the next best things … but I would have a care.

Only the future can determine whether ours was a brilliant performance or a spectacular failure. With either possibility in play, I would err on the side of a good heart. At the very least, it means our thoughts were in the right place. Over the long run, I think that is the best any of us can really ask of ourselves and of each other: that we do our best with the best of intentions. Sometimes, it won’t work out, but then again, many times, it will.