When the call is uncertain, you pause. You do not pass go. You do not collect $200. You may go around the board a few times, but you hoard your money as best you can. You do not make any rash purchasing decisions, not even if you land on Boardwalk or Park Place, your favorite properties. You wait. You become still.
Once you have stilled, you must still wait. You do not make any decisions, particularly ones based on emotions. Emotions are your enemy at the moment, and you cannot listen to them. You must not. You must be strong. You must continue to follow the call, even if it seems that circumstances and people are doing everything in their power to impede that following, even if everything inside you is telling you to quit. You must not listen to those voices or those circumstances. Both are fleeting. Opinions change; circumstances worsen or improve; your emotions travel from one end of the spectrum to the other and back again – sometimes in the same five minutes. You, therefore, must not base your decisions on any of those things.
You must get away from those things. You have to find a place of clarity, which sometimes is found through the aid of another person. Sometimes it isn’t. You must travel your own hard path to that point of clarity. You rest there, and, for a few, beautiful but all-too-brief moments, you know what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. You then return to your chaotic world with the people who don’t always understand you or what you’re trying to do and with the circumstances that seem to be getting worse rather than better. You endure those things, all the while holding onto that sliver of certainty, hoping you’ll find another one as your thoughts and your circumstances and your friends’ and family’s voices bombard you.
Photo: urbanwide