A Thought...

This blog is meant to be more blog than journal, though I know it often blurs the line. But the subject is, "if my life is my message," so I guess my struggles on this front fit. Plus I want to record for myself, because every thought comes, then passes and then is gone--even though I always think I will remember forever. In our Dreaming Outside the Box seminar we had to list things we enjoyed in the last year. The goal was to get us to figure out how we wanted to spend our energy in the new year. So that during the year we can check in, and not just let life drift by in directions we do not want to go. One of the activities in my Enjoy column was starting our charter school. This did not surprise me. But as we sat in our group two Sundays ago and talked about what we had written, I realized something very powerful. I did not have to believe every day that this dream was going to come true. During the time we worked to open this new charter it often seemed highly unlikely it would ever happen. I was the cynic in the back of the room, inwardly rolling my eyes at the financial goals, the likelihood of it happening, everything. I had a definite plan B, and I was sure that that plan was ready to go. And then I threw myself into the school. I was just one of many, many people. I do not want to overplay my part. BUT, the lesson for me was that I did not have to believe in the success of this project every day to make it happen. I just had to show up and do the work. Once the project had been set in motion others could carry me on the days I had doubts. Kind of like when you have a running partner so that the days you feel like you could not even put your shoes on your friend shows up at the door and DEMANDS that you run five miles, and you cannot let them down.
I guess deep inside me I carried this notion that for something to succeed you must believe it is going to succeed every single day. You must never falter in that belief. In the case of the school my belief faltered on many, many days. I WANTED it to succeed, o boy, did I want it to succeed. But I just really doubted we could pull the whole thing off. For some reason it was so empowering to me that I could have doubts. My attitude did not have to be steadfastly optimistic. I did not have to forge ahead never allowing for the possibility that we might fail. I kept working. And so did everybody else. And really, that work was more important than my belief on any given day.
Madaline Blau said it was faith. I never thought of it that way. But interesting. That is why I was often plagued by doubt, the opposite of faith, I suppose. Her point was that it is more important to go for something you really really want to happen,even if it seems impossible and against the odds, and even if you cannot believe in the success of it every day. I realized that would pick the thing that had the most probability of happening. So let's say I had one dream, but it seemed impossible, and then I had a number two and a number three dream, and those had more of a chance of happening, I would typically go for the dream that might actually come true. She said no. The lesson of the school is to pick the thing that you really want. To go for it against all odds with whatever you have. Maybe you will fail. But it is more important to nurture that dream that you hope for most of all. Huh.
AND, it is OK if you do not have the strength to believe in it every day. If you can set that thing in motion, if you can have the discipline to keep showing up and working, whatever you are feeling inside, you still have a chance of making it come true.
This is a paradigm shift for me. But I am going to try to think this way...I am going to really, really try.