Restlessness

When we enter this world we have no fear and we have no power.

We can’t feed ourselves, we can’t talk, we can’t walk. It’s this powerlessness that makes us restless. Restless to acquire the knowledge, the skills and the wisdom to make our dreams come true. Some may even say this restlessness is bravery or passion, just by another name. Our restlessness is insatiable.

As you grow though, you find people install boundaries around you. Fences that hem you in. Your fenced field of dreams and reality, houses all that you’ve learned, all your feelings, emotions. Your personality. Your fearless restlessness begins to subside and you begin to build your own walls. Each time you fail, another wall goes up. These are the things that keep you awake at night. Your regrets. Your loneliness. And sometimes, maybe both.

Your fenced field you now call life. Who was that ambitious kid who was full of passion and love and restlessness. Fearlessness coursing through their veins.

‘What you see, is all that I am, all that I can do, all I will ever be.’

However…

Every fence always needs fixing. There’s always a small opening in it somewhere. The fence is never fully closed. You know that if you stick your neck out, if you step across that opening there’s still a small ray of hope that you can become more than what you are, but…

Change is hard. Painful. Why is it so difficult to give up these thoughts, these bad habits? For most people, this is when they begin their slow fade from existence.

There is no particular time either. When your 30, 40, 50. Anytime.

The reality is, there is no fence. There is no field locking you away. There are no limits, no ultimate defeats, just as there is no definitive victory. There is no secret to success, no yellow brick road, no certainty.

But there is always discovery. Creativity. No one else is responsible for your fence but you. You are the only one who doubted yourself or convinced yourself that you weren’t good enough.

You are your own narrator to the story of your life. Telling the same old story, over and over again is safe. Fed by powerlessness and fear.

It takes a hell lot of will power and fearlessness to change this. It’s painful. Change. Growth. Restlessness is painful.

Deciding that you can is so much harder than just deciding that you could.

You will reach a certain point in your life when you deicide that you’ve suffered enough. You don’t want to suffer anymore. You can either play it safe wanting comfort so badly that you will react to all kinds of discomfort and simply not improve. Playing it safe means giving up on dreams because they seem too big to ever come true.

And the suffering continues.

So keep on suffering…until you decide that you’ve suffered enough that no one else has to suffer again. If you can do something about it, you will.

The ones who will leave their mark are the ones who will be open to new learning.

In life, it is important to remember that there are times where you need to change what you don’t like… or learn to accept it.

It is also equally important to know when you know you can, unless you want to leave this life wishing you had.