I went and saw a movie tonight. "The Help". It was a movie about courage.
Coming home from the movie I thought to myself how I need a little more of that in my life. To take those chance that I have been putting off because maybe I won't be successful, or someone won't like me.
The funny thing about this is that I have a friend - a best friend - who always comes home from movies like this one, movies that inspire and move you, and has some fantastic idea about a story she wants to write. It usually follows a similar plot line, but is fun to hear her tweak it. Most of them I think that if she ever actually put them down on her computer she would find the plot changing and becoming original. The point though is that I am usually laughing a little inside at her because of this, and here I am coming home from a movie and suddenly having the inkling to change my entire life.
Example #1:
I am LDS. It has been mentioned a few times on this blog. For those that have been living in a hole though, it is the shortened term for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. One can see why it was shortened. Our nickname in the world is "Mormons"- even if it is not really accurate. (I had the history behind that nickname explained to me once. It involved maps and an hour or explanation, so I will save you from that. I came out of it though never using the term unless I really had to.)
As a member of my church the young people have an opportunity to go out on missions and spread the good word. You may have seen them. Always in two's and three's. The men wear suites and the women wear dresses. They may have come to your door proselyting.
Unlike many of the girls I grew up with, I really had no inclination to go on a mission myself until about three years ago. I decided then that I wanted to go after all - well sometimes I wanted to go, sometimes I wanted to say "screw it" and get on with my life.
Mostly though what has been convieniantly holding me back is the debt that I managed to get myself into a couple of years into collage. I have a lot of student loans to pay back. If I am completely honest though, I have to say it was fear. I like to be good at things, and when I am not I usually find a way out of them. I am not good at cooking. I have managed to have way to many room mates who are willing to cook for me more than they probably should have. I also seem to have forgotten all of the basic stuff my mother did manage to get in my head growing up. just ask my Aunt Shari - She loves telling people about some of my attempts at cooking she has witnessed. On a mission I would not have that luxury. The luxury of just being able to leave - not not cooking. I would have to stick it out for eighteen months. I couldn't come home early, because lets be honest and say how AWKWARD that is to try to explain to people back home why you couldn't hack it for the full amount of time.
"What if I get sent to a foreign language mission and am never able to learn the language?" I am telling my self. "What am I going to do if it turns out that I am not a good enough member at the moment and the church rejects me?" I am and always maybe have been the sweet girl that most people like, but no one knows that I am LDS until I tell them. I am not an obvious member of the church. I know obvious members, and they usually annoy me. I usually find them self righteous, and in my judgement it makes me self righteous. This has not escaped me, but so far can not be helped. Even with that opinion of some of the members of the church that I love and believe in what they teach with my whole being, I still think that I would be absolutely crushed to get a "thanks, but no thanks" letter in the mail. It's like applying to collage. Instead of applying to individual universities though, it's like you apply to just go. The collage that wants you sends you a letter and a start date. You want the big packet to come in the mail. The small letter is still a bad sign.
Tonight I am thinking to myself "what if you are great? what if you can learn the language? what if the experiences and singular view point that you bring to the table are exactly the thing that someone out there that you meet needs? what if the church is just waiting on you to get your act together? What if this is something you are SUPPOSED to do and that big welcome packet is just waiting on someone's desk somewhere?
Example #2 - Writing
As it so happens, I am a writer. Growing up I had the usual childhood dreams of being a movie star, or a circus worker, or a fighter pilot. In between those dreams was always to be a writer.
I am fairly good. Not professional by any stretch of the imagination. I am better than a few, and not nearly where I need to be to be published.
I give myself excuses for not going further with that dream. I don't have time - I don't have good ideas- My attention span is really not conducive to the amount of work and focus that goes into writing a book.
There are also always those nagging questions in my mind of "what if I never write anything worth reading?" "what if I am just a laughing stock?" "what if I fail?"
All valid questions to me even now. I only have an associate degree. As much as I love books and learning, I HATED school. I have a lot to learn still about writing. I have a lot to learn still...period.
But tonight.... "what if I am great?" "what if I help to inspire someone, the way that literature sometimes can?" "what if I succeed and all of my dreams come true?"
Tonight I have a fire in my heart. I can tell myself that I am going to do these things, that I am a pansy to even think of not doing them. Tomorrow the insecurities and doubts will return. It is basic human nature to have them, I think ( the only thing I really took away from my one psyc class was how to train a baby chick in half an hour). As someone who thinks that there is a dark and a light, a good and an evil, God and Satan - those insecurities just feed his power over us.
There is freedom in choice. Fear has the power to take that choice away from us sometimes.
I suppose I enjoy my freedom too much to let this go on for much longer.
plus...
what if I succeed?
