Day 193. Take Heed

I’d wanted to write about this the day after President Obama’s State of the Union address, but I got distracted.  Oh, don’t worry, this isn’t a ‘political’ post.  I’m not about to dissect every word he said.  The media has already done it.

Done it.  And done it.  And done it.  I just want to talk about two sentences in his speech :  “We were never sent here to be perfect.  We were sent here to make what difference we can.” 

Truer words were never spoken.  What struck me was, the sentiment applies to almost every human endeavour you can think of.  We are so obsessed with ‘getting it right’ all the time, sometimes we never get started.  We stay stuck.  We go nowhere.  And you know what?  We end up losing by default.

We’re so afraid we won’t be good enough, we never sign up for those art classes we’ve always wanted to take.  Or the dance lessons.  Or we don’t apply for a job we’d like for fear we wouldn’t get it. We’re afraid our low offer might be rejected, so we don’t bid on the house we like.   Or we don’t ask the pretty girl out.  Or start training for the marathon.  Or enter the golf tournament.

Because if we don’t think we can ace it, we’ve made ourselves believe it’s not worth trying.

The amount of money we have to raise seems like an impossible task so, instead, we do no fundraising at all.