“If we wait until we are ready we will be waiting for the rest of our lives.”

~ Lemony Snicket

The funny thing about life is that it doesn’t wait for us.

It doesn’t wait until we have enough money or for that new job promotion; it doesn’t wait until the children are grown and it sure as hell doesn’t wait until we are ready.

Living authentically is a lesson in learning how to jump, even when we can’t see what we’ll be landing into. To wait is the human condition—it seems we are always waiting for something, so we expect life to wait for us.

As I get older (and maybe just a little bit wiser) I’ve learned that life won’t wait for us to be where we think we need to be. Whether we like it or not, life pushes us sometimes like the playground bully; continually presenting challenges to see if we are ready to grow or if we are going to continue to live tomorrow as we did yesterday.

As I sit watching my girls play, I see them take risks all the time; jumping from the highest branch they can reach on the old oak tree outside, continually going back and forth across the monkey bars even with rough calloused hands until they have it down; And I wonder, when do adults lose that fearlessness?

When do we stop jumping? When do we start shying away from that which is hard at first?

Why, as we get older, do we take fewer risks—instead appearing to prefer life inside the safety of the harbor, making as few waves as possible, fearing the storms of change.

What if we dared to do precisely those things that we fear the most?

Every morning that we wake up, we are presented with a choice:

to live life like we have been, or to make a change. To Jump.

All of us have an area in our lives where we stand at a crossroads, regardless of where we are in our journey. I have been at that crossroads many times in the past few years; I had the chance to close my eyes to my failing relationship, to bury my head in the sand and hope that that it would all work itself out in the end, and I choose that option. A lot.

Until one day, I finally woke up and I was honest with myself.

I had to admit that no one had the ability to change my life but me, and that no matter how much I wished to not have the responsibility of making such a huge choice, life kept kicking me in the ass until I finally stood up, took control and did what I needed to do.

So I jumped.

But this is the really amazing, and spectacular thing—once I jumped, doing it again and again became easier and easier. Once I realized that I had conquered the very thing I had feared the most, I realized that I was kinda awesome, and could probably handle anything after that.

It’s an exhilarating feeling to just do what I want to do; to live my truth, every single day.

Saying what I want or what needs to be said; taking chances with my career, my dreams; reaching out and letting those people who matter to me know their place in my heart, letting go of those people and situations that I have outgrown, trying something I’ve been thinking of for years…

It’s living every day in this amazing moment of love and synchronicity, not needing the promise of tomorrow.

And it has a snowball effect—once we start living in the right here, right now, understanding that life will keep moving whether we want it to or not, we realize it all comes down to, Why Not?

Why not!

We just need to follow our hearts—live for the happy moments, the moments that call to our soul.

We all have two voices inside of us; One that tells us what we should be doing; How we should be living our lives, and then the other (which is my personal favorite), that voice that speaks from deep inside our core, the one that tells us to call out of work and drive to the ocean for the day, the one that says to call someone, or do something that we’ve been thinking about…the voice that keeps tugging at us when we don’t listen to it enough.

But, What if we did?

What if tomorrow, we awoke with the realization that this week was going happen whether we make any life decisions or not, that it could be just another month, just like the past three months that we’ve used (or wasted) depending on the choices that we have made…

Or, we could wake up, facing our greatest fears, and decide to make the conscious choice to live through our hearts this week—to listen to the voice that we’ve silenced for far too long.

To Jump.

Maybe Life won’t wait for us, but if we are living every day to the fullest, and seizing each and every opportunity that comes our way for happiness, and adventure, then we are living life honestly and authentically for ourselves and we can’t ask for more than that.

The reality is none of us are ever ready for anything. To fail is to have tried, and there is integrity in that.

So why not? Just Jump.

Who cares if life won’t wait for us, we can make the decision to not wait for life, and that makes all the difference.

~

Author: Kate Rose

Editor: Emma Ruffin

Photo: Flickr

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