Sometimes we all wonder if we should do something new or try something big or different. Should we work on the car for the first time or write a book or change careers? People will notice though. What if we fail? People will certainly notice that. What if no one ever reads the piece? What if we can’t fix the car? What if we suck at our new careers? The concern is that we will be judged as failures and scrutinized for our decisions.

The problem is we don’t know if we will hit it big or just hit our heads against the wall or do more damage to the car than it had when we started. Maybe both. Maybe neither. Maybe something else.

There are no guarantees of success. But if we don’t try the only guarantee is failure. It is that simple. If we don’t run the risk of failure we never allow the opportunity of success. And success must be the focus. Not the possible failure, but the achievement we long for. It is easy to give in to the seductions of pitfalls and doubts, but to feel and know in our lives what we have felt in our souls is where the meaning of life shows itself. It has awaited acknowledgment and been put off for long enough.

So I keep banging on the door. I keep reaching out and planting seeds. I keep kicking and screaming, loving, laughing, and trying, because it’s all that I have. It’s all that I can offer.

We are limited to the gifts any of us have received to live a life of purpose, the life that we crave.

My belief is as humans we are here to keep expanding, learning, growing in our awareness…moving forward. The world moves forward by the same rules, piece by piece, moment by moment, if it chooses to move forward at all. For we are the pieces that change the landscape of the puzzle even if no one else notices we are doing it. Even if no else agrees or thinks we can.

At the very least we have something that is ours and no one can take that away.

We pull for the underdog. At one time or another we have all faced great odds and hopefully have succeeded or would have liked to have succeeded in that moment.

No kid dreams of missing the shot at the buzzer or as a pitcher walking in the winning run to lose the game. No, it’s big. It’s always big, because we dream big. But do we live big? Can we? I guess there is only one way to find out by seeing if we can fix that car or write that book or change careers.

In everything we do there is a possibility of failure and a possibility of success, yet success must be the focus. It is why we started the undertaking in the first place. Even just putting one foot in front of the other is the same. But we’re confident in that involuntarily, unless perhaps someone is watching. Then we also may stumble.

We can hide behind the fears of failure and never do anything that is meaningful.

Many think I’m a fool for what I’m doing. Putting it all on the line. That I can’t or won’t or shouldn’t make it. Instead I should have a nice and neat “career”. But I never wanted to be an astronaut or accountant or physician. Nothing else than what I’m doing ever made sense. So I do what makes sense. Though it’s a little messy at times, it’s all that I have. And though it’s a hard life I can live with myself for doing what makes sense. That will never be a haunting regret.

If all we do is dream, well, the guarantee is life will only remain a dream, an unfulfilled one.