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Having decided to take better care of myself and my health recently, I have had time to re-evaluate my thoughts and decisions. I’ve asked myself if I wish that things had been done differently. As always I had no desire to turn back the clock and change things, but I wanted to really dig into why. Here is what I came to:
“Everything in excess! To enjoy the flavor of life, take big bites. Moderation is for monks.”
-Robert Heinlein
Even though I wound up paying for it, and even though I may not have gotten the end result I was looking for, I had priceless learning and experience. This wasn’t some pre-packaged, sanitized, game-with-cheat-codes-on, this was me stepping up to the plate and taking a big swing.
This is something which I hadn’t really done in a while. It’s the tendency of all of us to stay within areas that are more-or-less safe. Even the risks we take are usually planned out and carefully managed. That’s not to say that we should be jumping off bridges every day, but my point is that few of us actually take a serious step beyond those boundaries that we build. We’re safe there, we know what to expect, and how the story goes.
I have been given a rare and precious gift: I’ve actually over the course of the last little while moved outside my old boundaries somewhat. Of course, I’m not “free” of them - they’re as necessary a tool as your skin. However, being able to move beyond those boundaries is vital if you actually want to breathe with life instead of being a cog in the machine. I’m not just talking about work, here, either: You can let gravity bring you down until all you think about is the area of ground ahead of your feet that you’re looking at. You can stay that way all of your days. Alternately, you can take a chance and look up. You might stumble, or you might see a beautiful sky, or a work of art that captures your attention, or a case of need that you can fill.
Take a chance on yourself and take a chance with the world. At the very least, you’ll be able to say you’ve done it. If it’s still not for you, then you can go back to staring at the ground, but you’ll still be the richer for the experience.
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