You exist in the subconscious without opposition. It’s but a quick trip to the tongue, where you roll off with ease. And with no real impediment, you penetrate the minds of those within earshot. But the utterance of you is not even necessary. You seep from the pores of those who let you live in them. You hang in the air like a foul stench. A simple waving of the hand in front of our nose doesn’t always rid you. You are resilient. You are very convincing. So much “evidence” proves you right. And before any of us know it, we are a slave to you.

To jump, to run, to improve, to love, to live, to earn, to forgive, to forget, to change. You will convince us none of this is within our grasp. To be intelligent, to recover, to heal, to be strong, to let ourselves cry, to take risk, to be happy, to be extraordinary. You will keep us from a life fulfilled if we allow you. [Read more →]

Flickr by tantek

How tempting is it to go it alone? The American spirit celebrates the individual and treats achievements as if they were all self obtained. So each one of us has a little something in us that makes us want to be a trailblazer. We’ll look at someone doing something with ease and skill and think emphatically to ourselves, “I can do that.”

I’ve done it myself. I’ve seen a furnace put into a buddy’s rental property and after it was said and done, I thought I knew a few things about installing furnaces. I’ve tackled small plumbing jobs around the house on my own. I have even given myself a haircut. I have had varying degrees of success with each endeavor. I won’t go into details. But I will say that my degree of success was highly correlative to the amount of time and effort I put into practicing and studying the endeavor prior to attempting it which was very little.

I am a true believer that anyone, given enough time and the right tools, can learn to do anything. The question becomes, should anyone do anything. The answer is probably no. [Read more →]