Challenging the Heavyweight Champs
July 14th, 2006 by Lani VoivodIt’s messy.
This whole dang “turning dreams into realities” game is a messy, maniacal mosh pit.
Call upon your best Announcer’s Voice within your head and play along with me. Ready?
“In THIS corner, weighing 470 tons, representing Fears, Past Failures, The Uncontrollables, and a lifetime of Outside Voices force-feeding you your own limits and explaining why the things you want out of life can’t be done – it’s the reigning Heavyweight Champion of the World…SHAMUS MAXIMUS!
“And in THIS corner, the unlikely underdog weighing three ounces wet, representing Hope, Will, Desire, Vision, Spirit, Truth, and an unreliable-yet-combustible reserve of Untapped Potential — it’s the scrappy Featherweight opponent we all know and love…GERONIM UH-OHHHHHH!”
When you’ve not only bought tickets to this fight but set it up and invited a crowd, the only thing “floatin’ like a butterfly and stingin’ like a bee” is your upset stomach.
Let’s face it — there are people on this Earth who are different than the main populous, and we’re called Entrepreneurs. We want more. We put in more. We expect more. We’ve listened to the straight-shootin’ voices in history who have insisted we should:
- “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.” (Henry David Thoreau)
- “Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other.” (Abraham Lincoln)
- “Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men.” (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
Yet, all this Grand Dreaming seldom lets us do the one thing we need to survive in this world (or, if not “survive,” then at least “exist in the infrastructure that allows our children to enter the public school system”), which is expressed so eloquently by Mr. Robin Williams:
- “Carpe per diem - seize the check.”
Dream Big, or Pay Bills? Hmmm. There’s the question for the ages, and one that fuels the hearts and minds of more folks blessed and cursed with the Entrepreneurial Spirit than I care to admit, including myself.
Honestly, this driving need to own our own life, manifest our destiny, create something from nothing, and turn our ideas into real, tangible GOLD is a tough business.
Even on the bad days (especially on the bad days!) the worst of it is that when we consider the alternative — spending 40+ hours a week (over 2000 hours per year!!!) of OUR precious lives toward some company’s bottom line — it just makes me want to vomit for our species.
But here, in the Messy Middle, where we’ve gone too far to turn back, but we cannot for the life of us see the Hopeful Horizon — and the debt is getting bigger while the reserves are shrinking into oblivion — all we’ve got is some crackerjack prayer that all those nice-sounding, optimistic voices from the past weren’t B.S.-ing us.
Oh, dear God, PLEASE — tell me they weren’t B.S.-ing us!!!
-Lani
