Try

This is an essay by Brandon Monk.

It’s an amazing thing to stand before the world and admit you have no excuses to achieving what you want. It is embarrassing to stand before the world and admit the only reason you haven’t achieved what you want is that you refuse to try.

If you’re trying to be perfect, stop now. I can promise you will never get there. No one has. The only thing you will accomplish by trying to be perfect is paralysis or madness. One of the greatest writers to ever live, Kurt Vonnegut, said, “When I write, I feel like an armless legless man with a crayon in his mouth.” As awkward as he feels, the results are still divine.

Just start something and see where it takes you. Give up perfection and give up feeling comfortable. Embrace vulnerability, instead.

Consider the example David Foster Wallace gives us in Infinite Jest. A person has 100 keys. 99 out of 100 of these keys will not work. One key, however, will open the door to your eternal happiness, or whatever it is you want. Will you fall in the camp that does nothing because you’re afraid of using the wrong key? Or will you try every damn one until the door opens?

To refuse to try every key is shameful, right? You’ve never given yourself a chance.

Your happiness depends on your willingness to try and fail.

Pick something to write about and make a habit of writing. Read above your head. Take on something you never thought you could understand.

You might find it gives you a new outlook on life.  At the very least, you will learn something about how failing isn’t as painful as you once thought.

Photo: Some rights reserved by Alaskan Dude