Building a better future

 There is this thing that happens when you make a decision to create a different future to the one you imagined.

A better one. 

It's like you attach a solid cable between your current reality and the future one. 

That's how it felt for me when we decided to move to Denmark. 

That's the first part, you have to make the future reality as real as the present. 

Mights and coulds and what ifs and maybes and other vagary make it impossible to attach the cable. 

Too wishy washy and you end up using uncertain terms. It's not about burning your boats at your end of the wire, it's about building them at the other end. A firm point to fix something to. 

There may well be times when your future reality needs to be the point of stability as your current reality starts to become untethered. 

It's hard to give examples but for us it was taking a flat even before we had told anyone of our plans. We then sent the dog, Rex, and half of our furniture. 

You might be wondering why all of these details are important. 

Well, it's for this next part. 

You have to climb up onto the wire. You're going to be balancing from one end to the other. 

It will feel like that anyway, you will be walking along unstable, unknown ground. 

You will mess things up, you will constantly slip and wobble, you'll take hits you expected, you'll take hits you didn't. Some people might even try to knock you off. 

Sometimes it will move faster than you feel like you can handle.

Sometimes it will progress slower than you feel like you can cope with. 

You will have to face every uncertainty and that will feel strange, it will feel strange because were your cable not attached to a fix point you would turn away from the uncertainty because you almost always do. You're protecting what you have, but now, to you, there is no HAVE to protect. 

What happens along the way is collateral damage, regular jabs and hits to your ego, the frequent reminder that you are not as smart or as cool or as in control as you thought you were. 

You were just stood still before, not trying anything new, meeting the expectations of those around you, dwelling in a zone of unconscious competence. Living a comfortable little illusion. 

But come the end, you have the thing you were striving for. 

And if you're lucky, a smaller ego, the knowledge that you still know nothing, but also the knowledge that you can achieve the life you desire and you can be a person who pushes forward regardless of the obstacles and the discomfort. 

You are left with the knowledge that courage and bravery aren't traits. They are merely descriptions used by those who didn't act to describe those who did. 

and any of us can choose to be either. 

Which do you choose? 

Ed Ley