This is Day 2 of my 30-Day Blogging Challenge which coincides with my joining Celestine Chua's 30-Day Live a Better Life Challenge.
On the second day of Celestine Chua's 30-Day Live a Better Life Challenge, I'm reminded of my oldest sister who lives in Canada and the clothes she used to send to us through a balikbayan box. My oldest sister was a creative individual who would never wear clothes straight out of a boutique. Nifty with a needle and thread, she would alter new clothes and come up with a "Hyacinth" original. By alter, I mean that she would rip a sleeve off, sew additional buttons, or add a tulle flounce somewhere. This is what I've been doing with Celestine Chua's tasks, except that if Celes' LBL Challenge were a dress, I would have cut through the neckline, ripped a sleeve off, and made the skirt shorter. I wish that I did this as a creative endeavor, but I am ashamed to admit that it all boils down to fear.
Why am I afraid? Today's task is this:
What would you do if you can never, ever fail? What would you do if you have unlimited resources, time or networks? What are your biggest goals and dreams? What would you want to achieve in your life? What is your ideal life? What is a life you can look back and be proud of living, and tell yourself "I've truly lived to my fullest?"
All the others in the LBL challenge enjoyed this exercise, but I looked exactly like that kitten on the image, afraid to cross the road. Where is the 20-year-old, 5'2" (okay, okay 5'1") girl who flew to Japan with just $200 in her pocket and who knew no one in that land? Where is that fearless woman who went to Baltimore on an internship not knowing anyone else?
Why can't I dream? It's because I fear that I might not achieve it. How agonizing that would be! I don’t want my life to be “a perfect graveyard of buried hopes” as Anne of Green Gables would have said.
So, I don’t hope and I don’t dream.
Then I found this quote by Theodore Roosevelt in The Art of Manliness:
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
Armed with this, I dare to dream.
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