Monday, June 5, 2006

Overthinking It

For a moment, I consider that I am simply too old to be standing with a foot suspended over the abyss of the unknown. On the verge of leaning forward, about to shift the weight to that outstretched foot, confident that the resultant free-fall will be an escapade of the highest order. I have been there, and I have done that.

Thirty years ago, that expectation of adventure was richly rewarded. There may have been accompanying bumps, bruises, a compound fracture or two….but they always healed quickly, and always the golden nugget of knowledge, of experience, was squirreled away into memory.

Perhaps there are, at last, too many of those little nuggets stored in the cupboards and closets of my mind. They are stacked to the rafters and oozing out under the doors and around the hinges; no longer golden, but turned to dross. Unrewarded risks, confident forays into mud or mire, heedless wagers placed on losing horses… They mock me; they haunt me. They drag me down. To safety. To uncertainty. To paralysis.

All I can do is strap on the blinders…allow no look back, nor to the side, nor too far ahead. Certainly no further ahead than the next footfall. Just make myself keep moving, and I will get There. And once I am There, the fear, the restraint, the immobility will be pushed aside by the process of contriving to make it from day to day…the simple groundwork of success.

4 comments:

  1. The risk of taking a step into the unknown...   very scary!  You can do it though, taking one step and day at a time.  My sister is going through the same thing.  She is opening her own business at the end of this month after 25 years of working for a big corporation.  She borrowed money against her home so this venture comes with a tremendous amount of risk.  She too is scared to death but excited about the potential.  I am rooting for you both!

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  2. At first I thought Stacy wrote "the first step into the sunshine," which is what it is.  Especially in Oregon.  

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  3. From my 'Believing In Ourselves' day by day calendar...."If ambition doesn't hurt you, you haven't got it."~Kathleen Norris   and   "A good goal is like strenuous exercise.  It makes you stretch."~Mary Kay Ash

    Don't look back....

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  4. tHE playwrite, Edward Albee, referred to life as 'a delicate balance'.

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