You really can do whatever you want, you know.
People who say that aren't just naive optimists.
However, they do leave out a very important caveat:
You really can do whatever in the world that you want...
So long as you want it MORE than anything else in the world.
Like... say you want to leave town.
Maybe you don't do it.
Maybe you sit in your office and dream about getting on a plane but you never do.
Responsibilities, money, family, friends, fear...
Excuses.
Honestly,
Excuses.
The truth that people don't like to face because it makes them uncomfortable is that if you REALLY wanted to leave town,
If you wanted that and only that,
If you wanted it more than anything else in your entire life,
You would do it.
That is the simple truth about... most impossible things.
You want it? You've got it. But you've got to be willing to give up every other thing in your entire life in pursuit of it.
You've got to know yourself well enough to know, absolutely KNOW, that this thing is what you want, what your soul craves, what your dreams revolve around.
You have got to be 100% dead SURE that what you want is what you WANT.
And if you are, if you can know that and face it and understand how selfish it might be to abandon everything else in your life for it, and if somehow it still pulls you towards it like a magnet even with all the rationality and doubt and practical thinking you can throw at it...
Then that is your purpose. Your dream. And you will have it.
That said, anyone who thinks I'm unreasonable, or silly, or naive, or wasteful for going after love...
Quite simply, I know what I want.
I know who I want.
I know what makes me happy.
And since I know it so clearly, so utterly, so inescapably, I couldn't possibly live with myself if I didn't do everything I could to have it.
And it's not an easy path, knowing what you want.
Because when the answer is no, it's no to your deepest dreams, to your heart's most aching desire.
When you have to wait, you have to wait for air to fill your lungs, you have to wait to be born.
When you lose it, you lose the sun, you lose the earth under your feet, you lose the courage to look in the mirror.
But when you have it... when you have it, you have a home.
I know what I want. I want love. I want to be happy.
I want to do what I love doing, and I want to be with who I adore.
And if I know that, and I admit that, and I put everything I can into that...
Well then,
It's not over until I breathe my last breath.
I haven't failed until I've fallen.
And I think I can live with that.