While I watch my children run along the shoreline, dipping in and out of the water—testing their boldness, I can’t help but envy them. So young and so innocent. At this moment as the water comes crashing around them they are faced with a decision; to jump on in or let it gather around their feet.
My older ones seem to know no fear and jump in—despite the popular shark video circulating local Facebook posts of the sharks off coast at Myrtle Beach last week. My younger one seems to want me to hold his hand and walk him only far enough so that he can see how deep the water gets on him.
He doesn’t go further and he doesn’t go backwards. He finds his comfort zone and that’s exactly how far he will go, but isn’t that us? We find exactly how far we can go and that’s as far as we go. We get comfortable, we settle and move forward. So today, as I watch the blue horizon and the ships out for sail, I see that we could be the ship. We are grounded on the shore, we test our limits by only going so far and when we see that we can’t go further, we settle. That’s a choice. You can go as far as you want.
You can master the ocean and sail anywhere you want—but how much effort and time are you going to put in to it? Do you test your limitations by trying and failing once, or do you test your limitations and fail multiple times only to finally succeed?
Somebody once told me that ‘if success doesn’t come to you naturally, then you go out and make it yourself’. So, if you are faced with an ocean in your life—don’t keep your feet planted in the sand—jump on out there and swim! (This is metaphorical. Don’t really swim out in the ocean as far as you can. There are sharks!)
