Standing Still

Sometimes I come across something on the internet that makes me think. Like that picture of someone standing still in front of a sort of maschine with many buttons and lamps and the advice to keep your hands in the pocket if you don’t know which button to push. And maybe what started my thoughts was the fact that this came from the very person who some years ago when asked for a quote gave me „walk into what you fear“.

I guess we all know those situations when we puzzle what to do, what is wrong and what is right, and fear the outcome of either way. But is standing still, unable or unwilling or both to make a decision really the best possibility? Is NOT pushing a button to see where it leads to so clever? In other words: Is it a good idea to keep your hands in the pocket?

Standing still means we stay in this bubble of suspended time, somewhere between past and future. In this bubble of fear while life goes on just because we are too afraid to dare take a risk.

For a lot of opportunities life only offers a certain window of time. So, if we don’t walk through the door while it’s open it might close, and we’ll never know what was behind it. And won’t this leave us puzzling forever what might and could have been?

Do we really want to miss out chances, maybe even the one thing that could turn our life around and make us a better, a happier person? At the end of our life do we want to ask ourselves if that one decision once not taken, this one risk we didn’t dare face, this one fear we didn’t walk into was the one big opportunity to find our happiness?

Famous German songwriter Wolf Biermann once said „wer sich nicht in Gefahr begibt, kommt darin um“ (who doesn’t walk into danger will die in it). Madonna once said „no risk, no glory“. I’d like to put it more mildly:

A decision can be good or bad for you but you’ll only find out if you make it. Most decisions are not made for an eternity, just like there are no garanties. And fear really is no argument because you overcome it the moment you walk into it.

And to quote P!nk: „Just because it burns doesn’t mean you’re gonna die, you gotta get up and try, try, try…“

So maybe don’t push all the buttons at once. Keep one hand in the pocket, but push a button. And then the next, and the next, … And even if you blow up some fuses, even if your whole world falls apart and you have to regroup and come back, everything is better than standing still until you meet your very own moment of regret.

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