The saying goes that you should never let your reach get beyond your grasp. The idea is that you will risk too much for a gain that may be achieved with patience and a time. And this is a fair thing to say and, in its way, very wise.
While not every endeavor is as dangerous as parkour or rock climbing, the notion that you must make a ‘leap of faith’ to achieve something you love while risking everything you have is a very present one. I have seen the stories of people that quit their ‘day job’ in order to pursue something they love. We look at them with a mix of respect and shock. How dare they? How could they?
Why won’t I?
Simply put, because it often doesn’t work. You reach too far and your grasp loosens and you fall. Not necessarily to your doom but enough to put you back so that you must take time now to move back to where you were.
No one likes to fall. To fail. But it is often through failure that we learn what it takes to succeed.
There is a balance, delicate as a spiderweb but just as strong, and that balance is how you find your way forward.
You must trust yourself enough to do the work to know that if you fall you will be not perish, but you must also trust yourself enough to know that if you are reaching for it then it’s something worth falling for if that happens.
Walk down the street or get on a social network and you’ll find thousands of people who will tell you how not to do things. How to fail. How to lose. How to wait. They will tell you that they know best. The thing is though that they don’t know. They don’t know you, your true heart, your true passion, and they don’t know what you are willing to do or willing to risk. The wise person never risks so much that they will lose everything on a lark but they also won’t let their dream stagnate and die if there was true hope and life in it.
People will tell you all day how not to do things.
Show them how TO do things.
Make your path.
Step by clumsy step.
Be the inspiration for yourself and others.
Fall and get the heck back up and learn how not to fall next time.
Sure, everything has been done, but not by you.
You have YOUR eye, YOUR vision, YOUR voice, and YOUR skills.
You don’t have to do things how everyone else did them. Know what you want, what you’re willing to do to get it, and risk something a little, and see what happens. Slow is safe, yes, but once in a while you have to take what you’ve learned and push yourself a little further than you are comfortable and trust that if you should fall, you’ll get right back up and figure out a way to succeed next time.
And success…that’s up to you. You make that decision, that call.
You’re the one that gets to say what is and isn’t success. No one else.
We have become a nation of people looking everywhere but within.
Look within.
Find your passion.
Invest in it.
Nurture it.
Reach for it.
And if it takes you falling a hundred times to fall into success, then my friend, bruised though you may be, you still made it.
And that’s what matters.
…c…
