It is hard to escape the commonality of new year’s resolutions. I thought for a while and, the more I pondered, the clearer it was that promises are a bad way to start the year. Not only are they empty, ‘feel-good’ gestures but they mask the truth and lead us into pitfalls.
###Meet the wall
Imagine you live in a house at the edge of the beach. From your window you can see a lighthouse, stationed where the horizon meets the sea. For years you watched it light the way while the sea breeze cooled your skin but now a brick wall has been built. There is no light to be seen, no breeze to be felt. You are cut off.
You can, if you want, forget about it and leave it to the nostalgia-colored glasses of life to perpetuate how good your life was. Or you can accept that the wall is a challenge that you must overcome.
###Paper boats
As frail as we might think of ourselves, we are often reminded of how much further we can go. We swim when we ought to drown, we fight when we ought to retreat, we keep at it when we should give up, we develop games when we ought to work on normal jobs.
Why is it then that we allow ourselves so many excuses just to avoid doing the things that we actually love and want?
“We don’t have an investor”
“I can’t code”
“I’ve been too busy to work on my game”
###Because we fear.
We fear failure, we fear wasting time, we fear looking like idiots, we fear being poor, we fear so much, so often. Maybe the trick isn’t in denying our fear but accepting it - yes, we are afraid but it should never paralyse us. Allow your fear to trigger you into action, let yourself be afraid on not seeing the horizon again be the excuse to break down the wall because the wall was, all along, comprised of all that you feared.
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.