When I was just two I wore six shooters a white hat and in my mind I had a horse called Trigger. I believed I was the greatest cowboy hero I knew. I woke each day knowing I was going to be as great a hero as Roy Rogers.
Throughout my youth my hero’s changed but the dreamed remained, not that I could be someone else but that I could be something more.
My life ended when imagination became a fantasy, and where reality started to determine my fate. That’s the day I died, I walked I talked I did – somethings – but I didn’t live. I was following the reality of shattered aspirations and dreams, I started living safe within the parameters of failure.
I laughed at movies, but not at my own life. I had lost joy. I had lost my vision of being great, to be a hero, and I looked for others to rescue me. As I stood before the greatest obstacles in my life I had no hero within me to fight and overcome, it seemed I was always being stopped by my greatest enemy.
For years that enemy was anyone or anything that stood before me, in them I could see the look of disapproval. I could see the lack of confidence they had in me and I knew at those moments that any further pursuit was useless, I was beaten.
If it wasn’t faces then it was events, things I had built too large, that were too big to climb over or too dangerous to pass around. And in that I found more reasons to quit.
Yes I have made progress in my life, I listened to others who measured my progress as “Pretty Good”, or “you should be happy with that” but I never have been. Because inside me lies something bigger, where hope is eternal and bravery is my best friend. It is where I know there is more, where I have buried a treasure of accomplishment and found the riches of dare.
In the past few years I have started to recapture the optimism of my youth, where I can again see dreams not as fanciful thoughts but as purpose, and when I reach it for a few fleeting moments I surrender to a joy which is indescribable.
This did not happen in a single epiphany, it happened after years of standing on the side lines and watching someone else do what I only wished I could. I became sick of cowering, where the thought of finding an excuse repulsed me. And in this state I discovered the real enemy is me. The only excuses that ever stopped me came from me.
Each day my enemy returns – his language is softer and subtle but the message is the same “you can’t do it”. Moments pass and opportunities are lost when I give in, but the biggest loss is my own self-respect.
But now that I push through barriers that had stopped me in the past, I see those old enemies smile – the obstacles once too big become opportunities to find those moments of joy.
And my struggles are welcome as I can test myself against my old beliefs.
One of my favourite authors John Steinbeck wrote “Somewhere in the world there is a defeat for everyone. Some are destroyed by defeat, and some made small and mean by victory. Greatness lives in one who triumphs equally over defeat and victory.”
Today I am Roy Rogers again.
Namaste my friends
