Why We Must Take a Chance, And Love All Over Again
Why should I go for it? Why should I toss an offbeat idea into the mainstream of the world? Withdrawal from a clinical psychology program. Forget about having a Dr. before my name and come up with a business name instead? Why should I discover whether my entrepreneurial spirit will set me a soar?
Have I gone absolutely mad? Seriously.
Why should any of us give ourselves a crazy shot? How could we possibly imagine our own tiny spark will ever catch flame?
I’ll find our reason.
When the streets were dark and drunk with people…
When my friend was passed out across me on my couch…
Her face still shining with makeup…
Her cocktail dress unzipped and left on…
The evening’s glamour hidden beneath a single bed sheet that she had tucked tight around her waist…
I saw all the women I’ve ever known in her.
Fallen with their own hopefulness into the night…
Sleeping alone with their lipstick on…
Only thirty minutes ago we had been talking through her disappointment, the parts of the night which were coming out in a wet expression under her eyes and now here I was witnessing her laid out, softly dreaming on my couch…
I saw myself in her.
In no way immune to disappointment…
Yet, more than ever before, a pursuer of personal dreams, whether dressed up in a gown or laying down with wrinkles in it…
The reality was life wasn’t playing out as we imagined it might.
So obvious this was in my friend’s stupor that evening, in my own wakefulness right then at 3:40am…
We were wound up with plenty disappointment and yet always falling back into our dreams…
Maybe what I saw in her, which I see in all my close girlfriends and in me, was a willingness to love…
To love all over again.
To come alive in the morning and pour curiosity all over our day, to dare asking what’s going to happen to me now?
What will the world toss my way?
To not worry about it.
To not be waiting for the next hiccup…
Our next lesson or grand slam…
Maybe we have a talent for this.
A talent for falling asleep feeling neglected and waking up with our heart ever the wiser, even more open then before…
A talent for always accessing the wonder present in our every day life…
No matter if the glamour of the day is obvious or hidden beneath a bed sheet, done up in a dress so jaw-dropping that we, beautiful enough on our own, might actually believe a dress would be holding our magic, our power for attracting love…
When we are holding that love in our heart already.
Who will tell us this at last? Tell us that the love we are looking for is already being brought into everything we do, only it is we who are bringing it…
It was 3:40am and suddenly, up on my elbows, I began to write a reason down, a reason to fling myself out across every one of my fantasies and see whether my smallness might dissipate within a world of my own making…
This is why I must go for it or at least this is the why I’m beginning with. And this is why you must go for it, too. Why every last one of us must risk all of ourselves, all of our familiarity, all for one bright idea, a dream, a chance…
Why we must do this is because our life belongs in our hands.
This is what I’m sure of…
That if I don’t try, I’ll never actually know my own magnitude, I’ll wonder “what if” for the rest of my life and I will never, ever forgive myself…
Plus, it’s just unfucking acceptable to give up this soon.