Born to Try

My housemate in London loves an Australian musician who has a fantastic voice. I have one of her Cd's on my computer and I was listening to it tonight. The first song on the CD that I have is called Born to Try. The lyrics from it reminded me a lot of my life right now. Born to try.

Many people will not take chances now. They are too afraid to lose the security they have, the love that they have and the family that they are attached to. They are afraid to seek the path they truly want because they don't want to lose what they have. They are unwilling to give anything up in order to gain the things they want. They are afraid to fulfill their own dreams for fear that it might scare those around them. That's not what we were born for though.

We were not born to be afraid of the potential that we have inside of us. We were not born to be less than what we were created to be. We were born to be incredible. We fall short of our potential all the time though, because we allow fear to stop us from trying. We leave our dreams behind as we grow up because we begin to see them as something that shouldn't matter as much in our lives. Staying in one place gains more importance and the security that that brings. We are fenced in by the love and the relationships that we have created. We learn the rules of the society and allow them to take our dreams.

When we are young, we are taught to dream. We are taught to have goals and find a way to reach them, whatever it takes. As we get older, we find out that we are only allowed to pursue our dreams so long as it doesn't upset our parents, if it doesn't cost too much, if we don't have to work too hard. We can't go after what we want when it doesn't involve a mortgage, a car, and a home. We find it hard to look at those who have followed their dreams, setting up NGO trips to Third World countries or joining the Peace Corps. We find it hard because we can see our unrealized dreams when we look at them. We see all the things that we have allowed to tie us down instead of doing what we wanted to do.

We were born to try. More than that, we were born to fly. We can follow our dreams if that's what we want. If we don't, then we can't let our unrealized dreams get in the way of being happy. We can't live in the past, but we can create our future. If what we want is to try and follow our dreams, then we should. Win, lose or draw, we have to try. If you never try, you can never win. You will never get what you want unless you are willing to give something up for that. Sometimes the cost is too high, sometimes it's not. It's a choice we need to make. And then we need to try.