I Made it to the Other Side

Two days of a higher education and I am exhausted!  Tonight I go back for one last shin-dig.  The things (how is "things" for an educated word!?)  I learned...priceless.  Yesterday, I spent some time with an editor. His years in the business, the changes he has seen....where once a publishing house resided on an entire street in New York City, it now exists in an office that does not consume one floor of a building in New York City.  Amazon appears to have taken over this world! 

He spoke on "fear".  Interesting how that is a topic in so many other areas I am studying right now. The fear of failure, the fear of success, the fear of completion, fear of rejection,...what keeps us from being all we can be?  He recently spoke to an athlete who had participated in the Olympics winning a gold medal in a sprinting event.  The athlete spoke of the momentary joy followed by deep soul invading questions that started the minute people could speak to him.  What is next?  How will you get there?  Can you sustain your success?  He had to dig deep and do the hard weeding of finding himself amidst his temporary success...find his identity that 'was' the pursuit of the gold and, as with everything in our lives, changed that one fraction of a second where he crossed the finish line: the fastest man in the world, for then. 

I sat on campus and pondered my fears...how do they define who I am?  Do they?  Do I have the strength and courage to dig deep into myself and face, with authenticity and transparency, at the least to my self, the dark fears that keep me in a life of  faux predictability?

The editor ended his time by sharing a simple and profound foundational truth to his life well lived.  He said, "Life is too short to work with miserable people.....for that matter......it is also too long to work with miserable people."  I wonder, do people become miserable when they let their fears swallow them and become their reality? 

I'm off to the Black Sheep gathering today...sounds like a sordid affair where all the black sheep of any family meet to show off their motorcycles and tats.....but no, it is an "all things sheep" event.  The drive will give me time to over think about my past two days...and dig a bit deeper on what is to come next.

Seize the Day!