Daring Greatly

I’ve been trying to go to sleep for the past two hours, but this demands to be written, so I’m relenting in the hopes that my brain will shut off.

Miranda Hart wrote an inspiringly hilarious book called “Is It Just Me” where she chronicles years of awkward moments, bad jobs and sticking her foot in her mouth on her journey to achieving something she didn’t quite dare even dream: becoming a comedian. She gives amazing perspective on things like manicures (“basically just holding hands with a stranger for forty-five minutes whilst listening to Enya”), Christmas (“Each year, from at least November, well, September, well, if I'm honest, May, I look forward to it hugely”) and the pressures of being a woman (“You may look at me and see a slightly frayed, wool-clad woman with an inexplicably hefty rucksack, but I look in the mirror and simply give thanks for all I've opted out of”). She also talks about the importance of remembering to dream. To dream big. To reach for the stars, take risks, and keep believing in yourself. In her words, “…holding onto the bonkers dream might just turn out to be the most marvelous thing you ever did.”

As most of you readers know, I recently went through another heartbreak. While that might seem unremarkable in the larger scale of things, to me heartbreak tends to feel like an atomic bomb in my life. My initial reaction was simply that this isn’t worth it. It hurts too badly, and I don’t want to feel it anymore. Inevitably of course, I start to come around because in the end I really do WANT to find someone. I’m a hopeless romantic. And I need someone to call my cell phone when I can’t find it.

I recently spent some time with a good friend. He and I tried dating, and it didn’t work, but we are the best of friends now. He gets me. He knows me. He thinks that I’m fantastic. He is one of my greatest cheerleaders. As I left dinner with him a few weeks back, I had the thought, “If I can end up with someone who views me and treats me the way he does, all of this pain will have been worth it.”

And that’s the beauty of risk, isn’t it? That risk, in the end, can pay off! We start businesses, we quit our jobs, we move to New York for the stage, we participate in clinical trials, we start a new diet, we love again and again because the potential payoff is worth the potential setback. But . . . what if there is no payoff? Businesses fail. We end up in dead-end jobs. People take medication, do therapy, change their diet and don't feel better. Is beauty only found in success?

I have a new goal. To be grateful for the moments when I feel like I failed. Because it means that I tried. To stop feeling like every dead end means that I screwed something up, that I missed the road to fantastic glory. I want to be happy for the experiences that I’ve had, not because they are preparing me to be successful in the future, but because I had the experience. Because the experience of fighting for it, of risking for it, will be what defines me rather than the end result.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” Theodore Roosevelt