There's something to be said about a man that continues to push for his dream in the face of adversity because he knows in his heart that's what he really wants. But a hard lesson to learn along the way is that if your dream, if your preferred solution depends on someone else buying into it, they may decide not to come along.

 

The idea is to improve, and as you're improving, practice with your wife...give her first crack to get aboard. We imagine a 1000ft rope tied between us, but that gives the false impression that this rope will at some point pull taut. Not so. It's more like that rope is paying out of a hold in your ship, and you have no idea how long that rope is. It could pull taut any minute, or it could pay out for so long that you could reach your destination, and she would not have moved. And then you realize that it's possible that no matter what you do or how far you go, there's no way for her to be at that future with you. And no matter how real or how plausible that future seems to you, how tangible it seems to be, that if she would just or things would just...that that future just doesn't exist. It's not possible. You made it up.

 

The hard part is, as much as we all like to think there's going to be a point in time where you know it's time to let go of that future, there usually isnt. When are we ever at a destination? When did you ever know that now was the right time to have a kid? Or that this house was the right one to buy? Sure there could be good indications, but ultimately you are walking off the path of indecision and onto the path of action.

 

To take the analogy again as life being similar to walking along a path...the path to your preferred solution could be right next to you. You can see it. It's right there. But you can't see a path that leads to it. You keep choosing paths ahead that keep you close to it, in hopes somewhere ahead there's a way. In an ideal world you'd have an overview of where each path leads. But we don't have that luxury. Courage then, is having the ability to take a path without checking all the way down the other ones first...knowing that the choice is a balance between the disappointment of leaving what may have been, and the possibilities of what could be.