Fear is a great motivator. It’s not just our longing that drives us, our dreams and desires, but also our fear—fear that we may live the rest of our lives ignoring our heart’s knowing and neglecting our joyous, creative potential.
Listen to your inner whispers; heed the nudges of your heart wishing to capture your attention. But if you find yourself persistently procrastinating, delaying your wistful nature, take a moment to consider the consequences. Consider what will come of you, what you will be relegated to, if you do not commit as best you can to this one, precious life.
Feel the weight of gravity that stubbornly pulls you down into the never-ending banal job, the deadening relationship, the continual denial of your feelings, creativity and gifts. Know this determined fear, its oppressive vision for you, the dry repetitiveness of its dreams.
Fear, if you let it, will pull you along bleak, narrow passages convincing you that there is nothing more, that this is as good as it gets; until one day, perhaps when you are old and frail, you wake to crushing regret—you dearly lament what you did not do far more than anything you did do: that book you wanted to write, the instrument you wished you had learned to play, the relationship you didn’t leave earlier, the beautiful woman you once desired to pursue, the heartfelt words if only you had said. You wake to find yourself grieving that you did not step into what you longed for or needed to do.
Are you really going to continue allowing fear and limiting beliefs to sullen your way? Can you not sense time ticking, your days running out in this life that longs for you as much as you long for it? Can you not hear your ancestors cheering you on, wishing for that moment when, finally, you can no longer tolerate familiarity, when you have the gall to leave convenience and move into unchartered waters?
That moment is now, if you wish; if you desire deep enough and feel that place in you that cannot fathom settling for what you increasingly can’t hold room for in your heart. That moment is here waiting for your unrest; for when you say Yes to Life, Yes to You; it’s waiting for your courageous commitment to soulful living, for your rightful place in the Joy that wonders what’s taking you so long to melt into its arms.