Actuality and Potentiality

When I was a child and enamored of questions, I asked my father Which came first--the chicken or the egg?
My father answered promptly, The chicken. Because actualitiy precedes potentiality.

I've been thinking of that answer lately in the context of my self-conscious blog theme, the attempt to embrace the loss of so much potential.

How much does actuality precede potentiality? Is any actual thing better than any potential thing? Is an actual sort of good thing better than a potential awesome thing? Is it like in law, when you commit a crime against the state and it bumps it up a notch in severity, so that an actual good thing is the same as a potential really good thing but not as a really awesome thing?

The other thing I thought about is how much I am, actually, that it never occurred to me that I might be. Is it somehow possible for all the myriad actuals to gang up on my previous potentials and kick them around the playground? And if so, how strong would the potential of, say, hosting Saturday Night Live really have been? That would have been a pretty puny possibility even 20 years ago before doors started closing.

What does it mean to be the kind of person who can't afford a Mercedes but who bakes a cake for each of their employees on their birthday?

Or the kind of person who can't get Sears to fix an air conditioner, but who can convince conservative business people to take innovative--and expensive--risks?

Or can spend a day reading water meters and a night reading about the capital improvement financing instruments used by Miami/Dade County?

I am so much less than I'd hoped, but so much more than I'd imagined.