Words: 556
When do you throw in the towel? Admit that a lost cause is sometimes just that? There comes a point when it all becomes too much. When we get too tired to fight anymore. So we give up. That’s when the real work begins. To find hope where there seems to be absolutely none at all. They take pictures of the mountain climbers at the top of the mountain. They are smiling, ecstatic, triumphant. They don’t take pictures along the way cause who wants to remember the rest of it? We push ourselves because we have to not because we like it.
The relentless climb, the pain and anguish of taking it to the next level – nobody takes pictures of that, nobody wants to remember, we just want to remember the view from the top, the breathtaking moment at the edge Of the world. That’s what keeps us climbing and it’s worth the pain, that’s the crazy part. It’s worth anything. We spend our whole lives worrying about the future. Planning for the future. Trying to predict the future. As if figuring it out will somehow cushion the blow. But the future is always changing.
The future is the home of our deepest fears… And our wildest hopes. But one thing is certain, when it finally reveals itself, the future is never the way we imagined it. Nothing is worse than missing an opportunity that could have changed your life. Maybe we’re not supposed to be happy. Maybe gratitude has nothing to do with joy. Maybe being grateful means recognizing what you have for what it is. Appreciating small victories. Admiring the struggle it takes simply to be human. Maybe we’re thankful for the familiar things we know.
And maybe we’re thankful for the things we’ll never know. At the end of the day, the fact that have the courage to still be standing is reason enough to celebrate. The early bird catches the worm. A stitch in time saves nine. He who hesitates is lost. We can’t pretend we haven been told. We’ve all heard the proverbs, heard the philosophers, heard our grandparents warning us about wasted time, heard the damn poets urging us to ‘seize the day. Still sometimes we have to see for ourselves. We have to make our own mistakes.
We have to learn our own seasons. We have to sweep today’s possibility under tomorrows rug until we can’t anymore, until we finally understand for ourselves, what Benjamin Franklin meant. That knowing is better than wondering, that waking is better than sleeping. And that even the biggest failure, even the worst most intractable mistake beats the hell out of never trying. A couple of hundred years ago, Benjamin Franklin shared with the world the secret of his success. “Never leave that till tomorrow”, he said, ‘Which you could do today. This is the man ho discovered electricity. You’d think more of us would listen to what he had to say. I don’t know why we put things off, but if had to guess, I’d say It has a lot to do with fear. Fear of failure. Fear of pain. Fear of rejection. Sometimes the fear is just of making a decision, because what if you’re wrong?