“Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinions of others, for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth.” Katherine Mansfield
Is this something that comes with age? With wisdom? Or is it just me? Surely we are now of an age where we should no longer care about the opinions of others. Are we listening to our own intuition, to the voice within us rather than all the chattering voices around us. Are we risking not living by listening to the opinions of others? If not now then when will we act for ourselves? What is right for us? Dare we carve out your own path in this life?
Why is it that most people only make radical changes in their lives when their hand is forced either by circumstance or illness, by redundancy or tragedy? What if instead of waiting for cancer to force us into really looking at our life we decided to chuck in the job that wears us down, to stop seeing the person who drains us each time we meet up, to leave the marriage that no longer fulfills us? What if we told our friend, our son, our mother we loved them more often? What if our first act of random kindness was to ourselves?
The old Chinese proverb says ‘a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step’. What will be your ‘single step’ today, what will you risk doing today?