If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is compromise.
If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is compromise.
ANAIS NIN
Is it always wise and prudent to be reasonable?
It depends on your tolerance for many things, including risk, stress, uncertainty, fear, insecurity, ingenuity and creativity. Being reasonable is most certainly a very positive way to get through life.
But, perhaps “getting through life,” just isn’t enough.
Perhaps there is a fire in the belly that craves/needs more. Perhaps, without that variable in solid position, you are more apt to see the world through a different filter than others. Perhaps, you would view all of your options against an entirely different set of metrics that might include curiosity at the center, supported by ability to improvise, assess, determine, evaluate, modify, pivot, imagine, project, anticipate, and ultimately produce, on a level that only you can define.
George Bernard Shaw said this one best, “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
What is impossible? I could spell out countless examples akin to the determination by someone such as Orville Wright, who said, “If we all worked on the assumption that what is accepted is really true, there would be little hope of advance.” Yet he later said, “No flying machine will ever fly from New York to Paris.” It took new giants to stand on his shoulders to realize that eventuality. All accomplished by unreasonable people.
Madame Marie Curie shared, “Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing must be attained.” After a career of unparalleled accomplishments, she eventually died of radiation poisoning for her ventures into the unknown.
Clearly, there is a fine line between pursuing one’s dream or dying in the process, trying. It can be seductive to pursue something for which you hold infinite passion. Your entire being fixates on how or why this must come to fruition, or be explored, invented or otherwise. In that fixation comes the danger of embracing failure, small or epic. So surrounding oneself with others who are readily empowered to comment, suggest, improve and criticize everything in the equation, has to be part of the successful formula. Seeking collective wisdom pays off in countless ways, generating even more valuable permutations.
This path is tenuous and requires unparalleled determination. For many, the compromise is the wiser path through the maze of life.
Choose your directions wisely.
Happy Wednesday!
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