Unrealized Potential

Leadership

Posted on March 5, 2009 by Blake Leath

Earlier this week, I stumbled across the Who the #$&% is Jackson Pollock? documentary on the Sundance Channel.  I remember hearing about it in 2006, but had never pursued watching it.  What a curious tale.  The opening lines alone are worth the viewing.

Knowing NOTHING about Jackson Pollock, his place in the pantheon of American artists, or the fact that one of his paintings sold for $140 Million U.S. Dollars, I subsequently watched Pollock, directed by and starring Ed Harris. 

When it was over, I had one distinct reaction: Disappointment.

Not in the movie, which was fine enough, but in the life and loss of Jackson Pollock himself.  The absolute 'unrealized potential.'

I know that may surprise, given his work and how highly art critics, collectors, and historians regard it, but setting all that aside -- the man's LIFE was tragic.  Manic depressive, alcoholic, philanderer... just lost and wayward.  Read for yourself, if interested. 

Thankfully, he found what appeared to be some periodic, transient (though ultimately fleeting) moments of peace in the faithfulness of his wife and fellow artist, Lee Krasner.

It's impossible to complete the documentary and movie without thinking of others who experienced the "Behind the Music" arc of Obscurity, Struggle, Moonshot Fame, Excess, Demons, Loss, Collapse, Dissolution.  (Beyond question, fans are fickle and fame is fleeting, but that's not my focus here today.  Nor is the undeniable amount of collateral damage that one individual creates through his or her own self-destruction.) 

The dubious 'honor roll' of those who died as a result of their own doing, who regrettably and tragically saw their Gifts and Talents pass through their fingers like fists of sand is a long list indeed.  Too long.

And then there are those who remain among us, but whose lives of unrealized potential linger on, zombie-like.  Their possessors are alive, but the talents themselves appear dormant or atrophied, like a limb exercised infrequently or none at all.

I think, too, of Dennis Rodman, Mike Tyson, and the countless other souls who, despite their once-greatness, find themselves 'cast' in what appears to be some recurring, off-Broadway play entitled, "Good Once, but Gone Now."

When I think of these lives, I'm not pacified with the contention that they were "awesome in their day or way."  Instead, I always wonder, "But what might they have been?  What could they have accomplished, given healthier upbringings, robust life-management skills, stronger coping mechanisms, broader perspectives, or even hope or meaning or garden variety love?" 

Would they still have hungered... had the fire in their bellies to achieve 'exemplarity' in the first place?

Perhaps.  And perhaps not. 

We'll likely never know, and the phenomenon will continue in perpetuity, a constant virus in the strain of life.

But there are those who accomplish many great things and carry on -- carry on for years and years, slogging through the quicksand and briars of life -- with grace and perspective in equal measure.

I know the legacy of Abraham Lincoln has received a renewed heaping of appreciation these recent months, but it gets me thinking.  What tragedies he sustained, what depression he and his wife fought, what sadness he experienced, including the greatest loss any parent can endure, the death of a child.  And in the White House, no less.  The apex of achievement, rendered potentially meaningless by such catastrophe.

But he rose.  Again, and again, and again, Mr. Lincoln rose. 

Among so many other admirable qualities, it's his perseverance that marks me the most.

I'm reminded of a childhood football coach who once admonished, "Leath, I don't care how many times they take you to your knees.  I care how many times you rise to your feet."

 

Let's commit to encouraging one another, to realizing our potential -- whatever we understand it to be -- and in the doing so, to achieving in reality what we possess in potentiality.