“Sometimes all you need
is twenty seconds of insane courage
and I promise you
something great will come of it.”
I didn’t
see Matt Damon’s movie, I Bought a Zoo,
but I saw the tagline above and latched onto it. I think there is truth to it.
As I’ve
aged, I have more fear than I did when I was young. I have less self-confidence. On the one hand, you’d think you’d have less
fear and more self-confidence as more went right over time than wrong, but it
doesn’t seem to work that way. Perhaps
we dwell on what went wrong over time or didn’t work out as we hoped or planned,
so it begins to take us down a few notches, making us more fearful and less
confident.
I love
listening to people looking backward at the turning points in their lives and decisions
made that changed the entire direction of where they were heading…. into the
direction they seem so suited for. Sometimes,
it seems like one inspired thought or chance encounter, or 20 seconds of insane courage, is the pivotal point of change that
guides someone in the “right” direction.
Twenty seconds of insane courage
probably present to each of us many times over our lifetimes. Do we typically step forward into the fear or
stand rooted?
My
husband, quite profoundly, believes music wasn’t Bono’s “path.” He thinks the music just brought him to his
real purpose – his activism. U2’s music
created the platform and the notoriety that allowed him to make deep and
meaningful changes in our world. What if
he never lived in the twenty seconds of
insane courage and never made the attempt to perform and play his
music? What if he went to work for the
post office because it was a good, stable job at that time and a more realistic
thing to do?
In Steve
Jobs’ biography, it describes the third partner who started Apple with him and
Steve Wozniak. Panicked, the third
partner backed out early on and was given $2,300 for his participation. If he had stayed, his ownership percentage
would have been worth $2.6 billion in 2010!
He let his fear drive him and backed out on the risky venture. The cost of decisions made isn’t always as
clear as this.
When I
stand at the precipice, I am hopeful I will dig deep inside myself and live in
that twenty seconds of insane courage. Being conscious of it might give me the
strength I need to live it, stand in that space, and jump off.
Photo: helicopter view of the Grand Canyon
