I have my days. I believe everyone does. Those days when I’m haunted by the little voice in my head that repeats, “What’s the point?” I just want to lay in bed and let my dreams take me away from reality.

Whether it’s because it’s a Monday, it’s raining outside or because I’m just feeling uninspired or unmotivated. The list goes on.

I have an insurmountable amount of excuses, doubts and fears that could paralyze me into wasting the day tucked away in my room, wallowing in self-pity and desolation.

But I get out of bed anyway. I show up.

To my morning meditation. To class. To the gym. To work.

And, honestly, some days I feel like a zombie. I feel like I’m just going through the motions. I feel like I just need to make it through another day. Words fill my head but have no meaning. Music doesn’t move me the way I once knew. These are the days my heart is closed to all the beauty there is. My eyes are open and a pulse courses through my veins, yet I'm not truly living.

I’ve let my negative self-talk and anxiety hold me back from many opportunities. I’ll avoid striking up a conversation with a new potential companion or keep my nagging questions to myself while sitting in a silent classroom. I’m afraid of being embarrassed or shunned.

But still, I show up.

I recognize that every day is a new opportunity to learn. To grow. To try new things.

Lately, I’ve been struggling to find purpose and passion. I’ve gotten this far, but where do I go from here?

Maybe I'm not supposed to have everything figured out. That's what others tell me, reassuringly. "It's okay you don't know everything, you never could," or "you're not supposed to have it all figure out, no one does."

The little voice in my head doesn’t want to accept that. It hides in the shadows, away from the spotlight. The light is too breath-taking and blinding. It wants to stay in the comfort zone. It wants to control the uncontrollable and change the unchangeable.

By listening to this voice, I feed it. It becomes more powerful until I grow to be submissive to its nature. I stare at the pages of a book yet I can barely interpret the language it displays because this voice tells me I only need to worry about it. It tells me no matter how much I read, I will never know everything. I will never be a great writer. I will never amount to anything.

So I hesitate. Every time I hesitate, I’m wasting the precious moments of life I can never get back.

I show up to get out of my head. To prove the voice wrong. I know, deep down, I have a purpose. I have passion. It’s hiding underneath all the anxious thoughts and irrational fears that resist my efforts to improve and grow and change. My true desires are like a dove in a cage, longing to be set free.

Every day, I strive to obtain the keys to open the locks on the cage. To set the dove free, who sings to me sweet songs of hope and love.

I must push past the voice in my head that questions my existence. That tells me I don't deserve it.

I do deserve it.

I owe it to my true self to continue to show up and find my way down the winding, ever-changing path of life that lies before me. To prove the voice wrong, time and time again, until it loses all of its power and withers away.

I will set the dove free.

“Write it on your heart
that every day is the best day in the year.
He is rich who owns the day, and no one owns the day
who allows it to be invaded with fret and anxiety.

Finish every day and be done with it.
You have done what you could.
Some blunders and absurdities, no doubt crept in.
Forget them as soon as you can, tomorrow is a new day;
begin it well and serenely, with too high a spirit
to be cumbered with your old nonsense.

This new day is too dear,
with its hopes and invitations,
to waste a moment on the yesterdays.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson