share lessons
07月 8th, 2011
A couple hundred years ago, Benjamin Franklin shared with the world the secret of his success.
“Never leave that till tomorrow”, he said, “which you can do today”.
This is the man who discovered electricity.
You’d think more of us would listen to what he had to say.
I don’t know why we put things off, but if I had to guess,
I’d say it has a lot to do with fear.
Fear of failure, fear of pain, fear of rejection.
Sometimes, the fear is just of making a decision,
because what if you’re wrong?
What if you are making a mistake you can’t undo?
Whatever it is we are afraid of, one thing holds true,
that by the time the pain of not doing a thing gets worse than the fear of doing it,
it can feel like we are carrying a giant tumor,
and you thought I was speaking it metaphorically.
People do things everyday that they know could kill them,
doesn’t mean that they want to die.
I know it’s not perfect, but it’s life. Life is messy sometimes.
The early bird catches the worm.
A stitch in time saves nine.
He who hesitates is lost.
We can’t pretend we haven’t been told.
We’ve all heard the proverbs, heard the philosophers, heard our grandparents warning us about wasted time, heard the damn poets urging us to seize the day.
Still, sometimes,
we have to see for ourselves,
we have to make our own mistakes,
we have to learn our own lessons,
we have to sweep today’s possibility under tomorrow’s rug until we can’t anymore,
until we finally understand for ourselves like Benjamin Franklin meant,
that knowing is better than wondering,
that waking is better than sleeping.
And that even it’s the biggest failure,
even the worst most intractable mistake beats the hell out of never trying.