Life can feel like a cage; a cage in our own mind but a cage as in the world, too. Striving for things that don’t really matter, like an advance or an image, a follower when we should be following what makes us grow.

I’ve been wondering what brings me back to my favorite books — what grips me about a story, why I find solace in the empty page. It hit me today; I don’t know how I didn’t see it more clearly before — a call to adventure.

We all have wings; we’re meant to soar; but when an obstacle is put in our way, difficult to circumvent, be it self-imposed obstacles like the notion that we’re not good enough, that we don’t have what it takes, that we’re not worthy of our dreams, we settle where we are.

Slowly, like an untended midnight flame, the fire inside us wanes.

We put our dream on hold, indefinitely on hold.

The Hero of Your Own Life Story

Why not take the risk? Why not go out into the world and act on intuition, the hero of your own life story with only one mission — not to look a certain way or to attain the same that others have, but to stoke the flame, not let it die — realize you’re born to fly.

There’s nothing like being moved from a book, as reading is a reminder, with endless ways and angles, of what’s possible.

Tales of fiction are often more real than reality. It wasn’t fully apparent until I finished Sometimes a Great Notion, by Ken Kesey this morning.

I believe if I can take away one thing from a book then it was worth the read. The stories that we return to time and time again are the stories of us and all that we can be.

We see ourselves in the characters on the page. They go out into the world, they fall, they have life taken from their hands. But the heroes rise. The greatest heroes of all are those we don’t expect.

They take a chance, and if you’ve read Sometimes a Great Notion, you know who the true hero is in the end. ;)

Those are the greatest heroes of all because they are us.

I’m seeking an adventure, maybe one I’m already on. But I know there’s life out there that my soul needs to connect with. I’m trying to look within from where I am right now.

I’m grateful for all that I have and what I’ve been through, for the love in my life and the love I strive to contribute to.

But there’s something more I’m looking towards, perhaps it’s a view from above that can only be reached from climbing, from stepping off and soaring, from having nothing but my thoughts and perhaps an empty page and a road in front of me to continue traversing.

There’s More to Living

The thoughts in my head untangle, working through whatever’s holding me back. Do I believe I can do it? Do I really believe I can create the life of my dreams where I can be a force for change just by being me?

What are we really doing here?

Is it being alive just to live, or is it living in a way where just maybe, we may truly come alive?

I see it as the latter, and when I see others with something in them missing, I wonder what I may do to help stoke that flame.

I know what lives in me, the spark that gets me out of bed day after day, lives within us all. A reason to go and break free from what holds us back — there’s got to be more; I’m just a kid who wants to soar.

When we’re kids, we believe we can be anything we want to be. Living in a fictitious world, yet fiction’s more real than reality. Getting there, re-enacting the worlds on the page, the vision in our dream, would provide the adventure of a lifetime.

Leaving home and what is comfortable and what is known and stepping into that void of uncertainty — beautiful uncertainty.

Pick a Point & Go

A bird is meant to fly and grow into all it’s meant to be. Pick a point on the horizon and go figure it out along the way. Pull others up too, who hear a swoosh, look up, and fix their gaze into the sky.

It takes thought, will, sacrifice, determination; but what’s more important than that? What’s more important than giving everything we have to something, fighting for it and believing in ourselves?

Security? Stability? Fitting into a mold?

Distraction from what matters comes to take our attention from the age-old story; that you can be the hero.

Not a side character, but the hero who gets back up no matter how many times they fall; not the pawn in somebody else’s game, but the champion of your own life who has what you need to just go.

Do the thing, make the art, put everything you have on the line because there’s nothing else that matters more. Although we hear it all the time.

That we should be doing this, doing that, from those that never took their chance, whose wings got clipped and never recovered.

More Real Than Reality

Maybe fiction is more real than reality.

Maybe we’re living in a book, waiting for the page to turn.

Maybe it’s not the right season, the stars haven’t aligned, the sky isn’t clear enough to take aim, and go.

But maybe it’s the perfect time, the only time, to live a life to call our own.

The Bhagavad-Gita says, “It is better to follow your own path, however imperfectly, than to follow someone else’s perfectly.” — The Practice, by Seth Godin

There will be challenges, there will be moments of fear. It’s scary to think about who we really are and what our own life might look like if we took a real chance.

But you get through that, you look at your life and what’s holding you back, and you can get through anything. Once you take that step others might take it too, and then we’ll fly together.

For we all have wings, now’s the time to fly.