Make Believe

My dearest readers,

I am deeply humbled to return and write another year’s #MomentumToGo, and (as is custom by now) I want us all to catch a good start—if you haven’t done so already. The year is still young, and fresh, so why don’t we open our eyes and look for all stacks of opportunity out there, stacks over stacks just waiting for you to collect them…the time is right, and it is time for one more thing: make believe, for “[b]elieving is half the cure” (Toba Beta).

If you can recall, I am (still) not a fan of New Year Resolutions, because a certain date alone can and will not make vast anticipated changes or a difference concerning who we are. Experiences do that, and not all life-changing experiences (or those of fewer impact) happen on New Year’s Eve. If we intend to make changes, improve, progress, and grow as a person, do we really need a date like the first of January to implement? Does it need a date to be refreshed, renewed, and all of a sudden this entirely different person?

After a long year of work we do take the holidays to wrap things up and wind down and get ready to grab life by the horns again; a year ending and a new year starting has that impact on us, and that feel to it, but the truth is that even though we feel our lives at a brief halt and suck up this little pause, that break to refresh, “[t]here is no pause in life, the moment we pause, we stop living” (Lailah Gifty Akita). Therefore I want to trace this opening post in 2016 back to last year’s opening post, take it back to starting in mid-action and the (not so) unwritten law of showing versus telling.

We don’t want to tell ourselves and others what we’re capable of, what all we can do, no; we want to show ourselves and others what we got, because talk is for those kind of people that have gotten weary and intimidated, fearful of life. Let them talk, let them tell everyone and all the world what’s going on; because that is all they can do, and all they want to do. But showing, in the sense of going out there and marching into this life—and as for now marching into a new year—is for those who love action, the ones that take action. Showing means leaving the comfort zone, exploring, and conquering. It entails confronting dangers, and it involves failure(s), often lots of them. Talking, on the other hand, means watching from a distance, while dwelling in a safe house. Why don’t we give the ones staying at home something to talk about and show them, back in their comfort zone, what we’re made of? We out there may fail a hundred times on our pursued path and are susceptible to fall for (their) talk, but then there is that one hundred and first time when we will cross the Rubicon, when they wish they had come across but only saw how we would conquer and stand firm in the end. They can tell, all of them, what you’ve shown, because seeing you succeed is the one thing to make them do what you’ve done all along: believe!

It is showing that makes people believe, because they are watching, everybody’s watching when you struggle out there, striving for completion and fighting for your dreams. And at first they may be happy they never left their comfort zone, but the moment will come when you overcome all struggles and made it to the other side, because “what really matters is not what you believe but the faith and conviction with which you believe” (Knut Hamsun). That is what you’re made of, faith and conviction, and seeing you succeed will do what shall be our creed in 2016: #make #believe!