What would you do if you weren’t afraid? This was a quote I read recently (and forget where from and sadly cannot give the proper credit for – sorry). Lists are useless for a question like this, and the answers to the question are inside us all, but we are, in the majority of cases, too weak or frightened to look in the mirror and answer with the truth. The fear of knowing the truth takes us away from a great number of things, but the one time that we take the truth head-on, roll up our sleeves and start an all-in, testosterone-fuelled, no-holes-barred brawl with it is the time that everything begins to take shape. We feel a form of ‘release’, and we challenge what we knew and what we now know. The release is from the metaphorical anchor that we all have inside us that keeps us in the life to which we have become accustomed, but, in the same way that a ship pulls it up to get moving, we need to do the same with ours, too. And right now…
I look at the answer as lying within a journey, with a start and an end, and a middle bit that takes us somewhere. Anywhere really. But the point is that it takes us somewhere new. We get to see a whole new world that, right now, we have no idea of what it’s like. Taste it, smell it, feel an atmospheric change when we step into it and open our eyes.
So, what can you do? What’s going to be your answer? Stop what you’re doing now for five minutes and think about it. Make some space in your world for just five minutes and really have a think about your plan of attack. It might be the most important thing you ever do.
(Written in 2011)
Ian Mountford 