Dear Me,
Today I am terrified;
terrified I will never make it. I will never achieve my dreams. All of the hard
work I have done will have been for nothing, destined to leave me with only
arduous memories. For a while now, it has felt as if all I’ve been doing is
struggling. Struggling to motivate myself, hanging from a cliff by only the
smallest strand of faith that I will be able pull myself back to safety, that I
will ever be on sure footing again. I am afraid that if I jump and am able to
fly that I will awake to find myself crushed by the weighty realization that
all my success was just a dream. There are so many things I want to do and
people I want to meet, but I am so afraid that once I begin my journey I will
make a wrong turn, never realizing that it was wrong. I am afraid I will lose
myself in an illusion that I’m making the right decisions to procure the future
I so desire. I’m also filled with fear that only after I have achieved what I
want, I will discover that it does not fulfill or make me happy, that it was
never what I truly wanted. Do I know myself? Will I ever know myself? Is what I
think I want now what I will still want in the future? What if I change my mind
and that change only throws me to rock bottom? I’m scared, but of what? Am I
scared of failing or of succeeding? Can I be afraid of both? It’s paralyzing,
this fear. It’s suffocating me, yet I still have room to fear that I will never
break its bind. I’m sick of being afraid, yet day after day I continue to
stagnate in inaction. I guess I’m not sick enough. Why? If I were to shed my
fear, I think I could be amazing. I think I could achieve all I want and more,
so why don’t I? Why? If I was truly
honest, I guess I would have to say it’s because though this fear is draining
me, it is something I know and can recognize, something familiar. It’s comfortable.
It feels like a shield that is protecting me from being duped, from being led
astray; it feels like trusty caution. And… now that I think about it, that
feeling is of what I should be most wary, mistaking fear for caution. Caution
can be helpful, fear never will be. Fear is what holds me back; it is the kiss
of death. So, dearest me, my advice today...?
well it seems in the end, you figured it out. if you make a wrong turn and never figure it out, how then could it be a wrong turn? meaning, if it never feels like a wrong turn, then it could not have been a wrong turn at all. and remember, just because you make a wrong turn; it does not you will not get there. sometimes getting lost is part of the journey. so fear not go out make some wrong turns, some mistakes, and just generally get it wrong while there is still time to fix it. I would not care if you made mistakes, I would only care if you dont try at all.
ReplyDeleteoh and one other thing. the measure of failure on a scale of 0 to 100, 0 being complete 100% failure and 100 being 0% failure or complete success. then you must know to never try at all rates a 0 on the scale, and to try, even if all you give is 1% effort, makes you less of a failure than not trying at all.
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