There Is No Better Time

There are things we want to do in life. Big, dreamy, unwieldy things. Small, specific, concrete things.

Sometimes we are open about our things. Sometimes we hold them close. Sometimes we wake up feeling bright and invincible, like we can do anything at all. Sometimes we drag and all of it - the vast and the tiny - seems hard and out of reach.  

I'm beginning to realize that this is life. This is the way it works. We are all patchworks. Patchworks of hope and despair, happiness and heartbreak, belief and doubt. We are fraught, fallible, immensely capable beings.  

And yet. We do so many things to get in our own way. We plan and plot neurotically as a way of avoiding the doing. We obsess about the past and the future, neglecting the present moment. We are professional excuse-makers; drumming up lists of reasons why this is not the right time to do what we want, or must. We are manufacturers of logic that imprisons us. We are aware and unaware, complicit and innocent. 

But here is the plain truth of it: life is short. There is no guarantee of how many days you will get or how much time. All the green juice and meditation and marathons in the world will not negate the fact of mortality. We will all cease to be. 

We can let this freak us out or we can let this inspire us to go for it, to do the things, to build the lives and selves we daydream about. We can stay humble and also cling to some healthy confidence that maybe, just maybe, we can pull it off. And maybe even the act of trying, of doing something that truly matters to us, will be its own reward. 

I have my own things. Things I sometimes dare to imagine. Things that feel doable or dreamlike depending on the day, where my mind is. But I'm going to do them. I'm going to try. 

What about you guys? You have things, too. Are you going to do them or are you going to wait and let life tumble by? Are you going to keep making excuses for why now is not the time? 

Now is all we have. There is no better time. 

(PS - wrote this from the soccer sidelines before the game and during halftime. No more excuses that I have no space in my life to blog.)