Most People Fear To Live

Blogging Every Day Is Easy- The Class Of ’69 Speaks seems to be a strange way to open a post about how most people are afraid to live but the crazy man who runs this joint operates off of what he feels in his gut and what he sees with his eyes.

I am not talking about the Strawberry Fields living with eyes closed is easy kind of life either. That crazy man committed himself to opening himself up to a life in which possibility turns into opportunity and he is doing his damnedest to follow through on the promises he made.

Ask him to try to explain and he might tell you about how experiences forced him to readjust his perspective and his approach. He might tell you that when you are forced to give up holding onto certain beliefs and are relieved of possessions you learn to adapt to your situation or you go crazy trying to figure out why you fell down the damn hill.

And since I am that crazy guy I can tell you when I fell down the damn hill I went over a cliff and bounced down the side of the mountain enough to make nick, scrape and bruise gather together to try to come up with a more descriptive term.

Somewhere in the middle of all this I decided I couldn’t keep doing as I was doing because it wasn’t working and that I had to come up with a new approach.

Circumstances helped force me to move and to take chances I had been unwilling to take before. The value of failure isn’t limited to the way it motivates you not to spend time with it again but in how it removes your fear of it.

That is a big part of what enables you to jump off of the cliff and say you’ll learn how to fly on the way down because somewhere in the midst of chaos you stop wondering if flight is possible and you just do it.

Where Do You Find Opportunity?

Einstein is correct. You find opportunity in the middle of difficulty. When the children face a challenge I remind them it is time to think hard about solutions and try to remember them for the future.

I tell them complacency and comfort sometimes fool us into thinking there is no reason to fight inertia and to try to make things happen sooner.

“Time is a gift, given to you, given to give you the time you need, the time you need to have the time of your life. ” ― The Phantom Tollbooth

Those kids of mine have heard me tell them the biggest regrets of my life are usually tied into the moments where I didn’t take advantage of time. They have heard me say I never want to be the guy that says I let fear run my life and listened as I tried to explain it is not about being an adrenaline junkie.

It is about determining what you need and going after that. It is about recognizing those things may change as you age and not being afraid to pivot and adjust.

“You must never feel badly about making mistakes … as long as you take the trouble to learn from them. For you often learn more by being wrong for the right reasons than you do by being right for the wrong reasons.” ― The Phantom Tollbooth

Sometimes we don’t recognize the most important moments as they happen. Sometimes we miss them but not always. Sometimes we catch on and recognize that even if we didn’t pivot when we first could have we can find an opportunity and intersection to do so down the road.

I can’t tell you how many times I didn’t pass through the tollbooth before because I wasn’t ready to pay the price but it changed a while back and now I know that I will.

Now I know that when I hear the bells ringing I won’t and I don’t ignore them. I just keep doing what I have to do to get to that intersection because I know what I want and I know what I need.

I’d rather fall trying to grab that brass ring than just stare at it each time I pass by it.