“Those who are not prepared to be wrong will never come up with anything original.” – Sir Ken Robinson
A very good friend of mine recently made an emphatic Snapchat vlog which started out with the segment saying “if you are not doing what you love and what makes you happy, start doing that right now.” At the time I thought he was just going on one of his inspirational speeches, but because my memory is by far a bigger pain in the ass than I am, I kept thinking about what he said. And what is even worse, is the more I thought about it, the more I had the damn Shia LaBeouf video in my head! Just do it.
Yes, he stole the thing from Nike and I’m pretty damn sure he was high as Hell when he made the video but the mad man had a point. Just do it. Don’t let your dreams be dreams. All of that shit makes more and more sense when you are thinking about it. If you are not doing what makes you the happiest right now, why aren’t you? Start doing it right now.
I’ve talked about my mother once before in an article, even dedicated an article to her (Changing the world to spite my mom) but she is again an example for this. When I was a kid, she worked as an actuary for a big company and was making a lot of money and had a big office and would work long hours in downtown Kansas City. But she was very unhappy in that job. She wasn’t crazy about some of the people she worked with, she didn’t the traffic on I-35 and she hated that she was away from me and my brother so much. She was unhappy and wasn’t doing what she loved, so she changed it. She quit her job and pursued her passion for music. Yes, it was a struggle and still is at times, but she is infinitely happier now. She teaches piano and is an accompanist for two different school districts and gets to do music as her job. She didn’t let her dreams be dreams. Yeah, I'm kinda mad that is how I segued too.
Now I will apologize now, but we are about to have a cliché followed by more in depth analysis than is probably needed, but stay with me. The biggest obstacle that we face when coming to face and take on our dreams, is not society or what it will take to achieve the dream, but it is us. Ourselves. We are our own worst enemy. Which is a horrible feeling because how exactly do we tell ourselves that we are wrong and that we can achieve our biggest and wildest dreams? And I don’t know about any of you, but for me it stems from the fear that sometimes I am just not good enough. That I will try and I will epically fail. Biblically fail. That I won’t be enough to fully get what I want most in the world. And I have a feeling that I am not the only one who feels this way. Because, as a friend of mine wrote in a poem, ‘enough’ is a double edged sword that drags us down and can keep us from being who we truly are.
No. I am done with that word and any of those damn thoughts. We are enough. Yes. You will fail. Most likely on a legendary scale. Minstrels will write songs about how much of how bad of a fail it was. But Samuel Beckett once said, and it is a favorite quote of mine, “Fail. Fail again. Fail better.” We will fail only until the moment we succeed.
Do what makes you happy. You are enough. Now go be wrong.
