Finding The Drive

Somewhere in there is the dream machine. Somewhere in there is the child within. Deep within us all is a drive to be, think, feel, taste, touch and smell. There is a need to cross the finish line. There is the hunger to be the one lifted on the shoulders of our teammates and carried off the field in the thrill of victory.

Perhaps this vision might look differently to you or someone else. Yet still, there is this dream to reach a level of greatness; to not only be valid or validated but to be honored and wanted. There is a need for the sense of connectedness that goes beyond just being included. And yet, adversely, there is often a worry that none of this will ever come true. There is often the inaccurate anticipation that somehow or in some way, as hard as we try, we just can’t reach the mark. 

To keep this as simple as possible, there are two halves. There are two ways of thinking. There are two things we can focus on, which will determine the course of our journey.
The speeds may vary and the terrain might change. We may encounter pitfalls and unexpected detours or find ourselves caught in the congestion of life as it is, which is basically life on life’s terms.
Either way, there are two halves. There are two ways of thinking and two ways of looking at our prospects and our dreams. There is no in-between.
There is only us stepping in one of two ways. Either we step towards the life we want and dare and risk, and work and focus on our energy and on our output; or, we nurture the fears over the undesirable outcomes and move away from our dreams in fear that nothing we do will ever be good enough.

We literally come in contact with “Dare to be great” moments on a daily basis.
We encounter new opportunities. We have the ability to meet new people, see new faces, try new things, listen to different music, find inspiration, find a connection, look for a new journey, listen for the voices we love, look to the sky, find something to inspire us, find a mate, find a friend, find a vehicle to take us from point A to point B, or we listen the delicate sound of quiet; to enjoy the sound of nothing that becomes so silent we can hear a ringing in our ears. 
We can look to build and create at any given moment. We can change directions any time we want. We can walk away or head towards our dreams. We can work to make something happen. We can defy the odds, which above all; this is my favorite.
To defy the odds: To keep going and to have never given up, no matter how many problems we’ve encountered. To reach for the title and be champion of the world in our own special way.
I love this!

Somewhere in us all is a drive. There has to be. Otherwise, we would never get up out of bed. We wouldn’t stand up when we needed to. We wouldn’t even nurture the simplest needs like food or water. 

I understand there are times when depression is so thick that it becomes too difficult to find the drive to continue. In some cases, I understand the difficulty of simply getting out of bed.
There’s no point. The heart and soul is drained.
There is this monstrosity in front of us; maybe we call it life. Call it whatever or give it a name and give this a face. Give it definition and description because otherwise, what we feel is this faceless, voiceless, lifeless sense of impending doom that tends to crumble us inwards and leave us hollow and broken.

I think about the depths of despair. I am not afraid of it anymore.
Why would I be?
I know despair personally. I know depression both personally and intimately; in fact, this is me. This has been me for as long as I could understand basic thinking.

I am not afraid of this. I am not afraid to speak about this. I am not afraid of the stigma either or the judgments because in all fairness, none of this can do anything worse to me than anything I have done to myself.
I am this. I am that wreckage and the carnage and the aftermath. I am the downfall of my own civilization. I am the master of my own demise. And I am welcome to think this way at any time I choose.

I used to live this way. I used to live with irrational fears and irrational doubts; as if the world was actually a force against me.
Nothing I could ever possibly do would ever be “Enough”
No one would ever be able to truly love me or know me.  How could this happen when A) I couldn’t love me and B) how could anyone understand me when I didn’t know how to understand myself?

In the depths of this all; life seems impossible. This is true.
Somewhere in there is the energy to either step towards the light or regress and turn inwards.

Somewhere in there is a voice that honors one of the two halves. Either we quit and we quit tragically or we reach and we climb, we kick and we scream, and we let it all out.
Either we quit and find ourselves washed away beneath the undertow of a sad existence or we resist.
We fight the tide. We find our source and we find our purpose and we rise to meet the occasion.

We might fall. We might not hit the mark every time. We might not hit the ball out of the park on every swing but the one thing we never did is give up. Don’t give up!
Don’t you ever give up because this is the cruelest type of abandonment known to us all. 

I am always reminded of the opening scene from the movie Saving Private Ryan. This scene is not pretty by any means. This is when the U.S. troops stormed the beaches at Normandy, June 6, 1944.
The gunboats arrived at shore and from a heightened and favorable position, German troops shot down at the soldiers as they arrived upon the shore.
There were one of three options for the troops. Either they took a bullet and died on the spot, they drowned in the waters, or they stormed the beach and declared victory. There was no other option.

The question became to me, who would I want to be in this scenario. Would I want to die on the spot, drown, or simply lose to the tide? Or, would I want to storm the beach and claim the hill and take the victory?
In all honesty, for most of my life, I believed I would have been the one that drowned or took a bullet.
I never assumed that someone like me would ever take the beach and make this a victory because I never assumed this was possible.
I never believed that I could be heroic. In the face of adversity; in the face of fear and outrage; in the face of heartbreak and sadness, depression and anxiety and therefore, in the face of my own supposed self, I never dared to dream that I could possibly be “The one!”

I never believed in myself so therefore, I gave up. I gave in and I gave myself away. I cheated myself. I cheated and lent myself to anyone or anything that could make me feel at least a semblance of human normalcy.

I never wanted this. (Neither does anyone else by the way.)
I never wanted to die or feel like I was worthless. There is the idea that suicide is about dying. And I get why because of the finality. But me, no.
Suicide was because I only wanted to live. And yet, I had no idea how.
I had no idea how to get out of my own way!
I had no idea how to connect my light and my dreams and serve myself by honoring me the best way possible.

There is a little girl I know about.
She was a kid and beautiful as ever.

I am afraid she is gone now.
I can’t say much else about her.
I can only say that I understand the direction she chose and why.

Until the day came when I made the decision to choose what kind of person I wanted to be and until I came to the decision that by any means necessary, no matter how hard, no matter how much pain, no matter what anyone else says about me; no matter what I am going to make that goddamned beach.

I have to.
There are two halves.
This is the half that I listen to now.

Shit, kid.
You don’t even know me. You’ve never heard my name or my voice and here I am, someone you never met and don’t know and yet I am crying hard, typing harder and screaming at the top of my lungs.
I am doing all the above because this is a painful reminder to me that pain like this really exists. Not just in me or in us but throughout the world.

We can’t look away.
At least I can’t.
Or better yet, I won’t.

There are two halves.
I can’t go back because I won’t go back. There is something inside of me the same as it was inside of you. And from now until my last breath, I swear to you and in honor of you, people will hear about this.
They will know about us.

I have something coming soon. I was afraid to take the risk. I was afraid to try.
But you . . .
You just reminded me why I do what I do.
Take care kid.

And rest well
See you when it’s time . . .