I met a friend in another neighborhood in Brooklyn to do some work, and when I went to take the train back home it wasn’t running due to some problem on the tracks. Since it was a nice summer night I decided to take the 45 minute walk home. Along the way I ran into the following message on the sidewalk:
As cliche as it is, it felt a little like a message sent directly to me. Serendipitous in fact, what with the train not working and all. The cosmic energies had intended for me to choose this particular way to walk home and run across this random message written on the sidewalk waiting to be read and digested. It was yet another reminder that you don’t have to wait for everything to be perfect to take a chance or a risk. It is all about trusting that everything up until this point has lead you to this ledge, so you might as well just go for the leap.
It reminds me a little bit of when I was younger and my family went on vacation to some small lake in Canada where there was a VERY high diving board into a very murky lake. It scared the shit out of me, but I also knew I wasn’t going to leave without conquering this sky-high board. The days that I stood on the edge thinking about whether or not to jump – I never did it. I would psych myself out and get so nervous that I would have to climb down. I had my family cheering on the side, encouraging me to do it – but it just seemed too scary. BUT…as I’ve mentioned before, my pride is one of the stronger voices in my head, so I wasn’t about to watch as all these other people willfully jump and jump, while I just stuck to the shorter diving boards. I also was a rather determined young child, so one day, I just started a little further back, ran and jumped. While there was that somewhat scary feeling of my heart falling into my stomach, I also freakin’ loved it. I loved the sensation, I loved that I overcame the fear and I loved that I did it. I proceeded to jump off that beast of board for the remainder of the trip. Some jumps were still a little scary, but the fact that I knew I could do it made it all the more possible.
The unexpected sidewalk message was a reminder to channel my determined nine year-old self and not carefully stand at the edge thinking about whether or not I should do it, but instead just run and jump.
“Creativity takes courage.” ― Henri Matisse
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