Scared of the Dark

And even when my days were the bluest

I never ran from adversity, instead I ran to it.

Fear ain’t in the heart of me I learned just do it.

You get courage in your fears right after you go through it.

-T.I. “Good Life”

Greetings folks! It’s been one week since I’ve made the move from Miami to Washington, D.C. and so far so good. That isn’t to say that things will always be a bed of roses. After all, winter hasn’t arrived yet. For the week that I’ve been here, so far so good. I do miss my family and friends back home, but that’s a given. What’s striking is the large amount of clarity and purpose I’ve felt during this past week, which is a stark contrast to the overwhelming lack of clarity and purpose I experienced prior to now. For the avid readers of my blog you know that I’m a well organized, scripted individual, who always has a plan. This summer has been like an unforeseen script re-write. However, instead of asking for a re-write of a problematic scene or two I felt like God was asking me to re-write my life, which needless to say was a bit scary.

I felt like my life was in the dark and to be perfectly honest, the darkness is what scares me the most. Not the actual lack of light, but the proverbial darkness, the not knowing. Most of my friends are like me in the sense that almost all of us have always had a plan and have worked that plan to near perfection throughout our lives. And I, like them, loathe the unknown. When there is something I even remotely feel like I don’t know enough about, I go research it until I become comfortable with it.

When it came time for me to move on from my last job, for the first time in my life there wasn’t an immediate space filler. For the first time in my 28 years on this earth there wasn’t something for me to do. There wasn’t a plan. There was nothing. I felt just like that 5 year old who’s terrified of what lies in wait in the unknown crevices of the dark; scared. Here I was at the corner of WTF and What Next and I had no idea how to get back on the road to success. You see it’s nearly impossible to decipher what lays in wait in the dark. It could be a gold bar or a rabid dog. However, most of us seem to imagine that what lies in the dark is nothing but ghosts, ghouls, goblins and misfortune. We assume that if we can’t see it and decipher its intentions that it can’t be something that will do us any good. Honestly the chances of there being something good out there are exactly the same probability that it may be something bad.

How many lottery winners knew they were going to win the lottery before they were announced the winner? How many pitchers knew they would pitch a perfect game before the final out in the 9^th inning? How many of us knew we had met the love of our lives before we actually met them? (If you answered yes to any of these questions please email me the winning lottery numbers for next week. Please and thank you.) In a sense, these things all came out of the dark. There is no way to know certain things until they actually occur. There is no way to determine that your house will survive the hurricane, tornado, mudslide, blizzard, or tsunami the other houses on your block didn’t. As such, you plan for the worst and hope for the best.

This past summer I did some soul searching. No, seriously, I did some soul searching. I did a total re-evaluation of my goals, desires, hopes, dreams, wants, needs and priorities. I figured out all the great things about me, and I also looked at all the less than stellar things about me. One of the lists was substantially longer than the other but I won’t divulge which one. What I did with those lists was find ways to eliminate the negative attributes and accentuate the positive ones and use them in my quest to find my purpose. It may sound crazy, but experiencing the chaos that descended upon my life this past summer was the best thing to ever happen to me. In that chaos, that hurt, that pain, the unknown, the darkness, I found purpose. I found out what I need to do with my life. I can’t speak for what I’ll need to do at 50 or even 35, but I know what I need to do right now.

As I traverse this path to success, admittedly I’m still in the dark about a lot of things so I don’t have ALL the answers. However, I at least have a flashlight so I can see what’s right in front of me. From my view I can see the light at the end of the tunnel which fuels me to run faster and harder towards my goals or get a Lamborghini so I can get there faster.  

Each experience in life, challenge or controversy, is an opportunity to write a new chapter in our lives. Regardless of how great or terrible the previous chapter was, it has absolutely no bearing on the next. Yes, what you did in the past and who you were before has shaped you into who you are today, but it doesn’t it mean you can’t be someone different with different experiences tomorrow. Don’t be afraid of the dark. Don’t be afraid of the unknown. Don’t be afraid to pick up that pen or pencil and write a new chapter in your life.

Oprah Winfrey once said, “I trust that everything happens for a reason, even when we’re not wise enough to see it.” So here I am, with my pen in hand, trusting the process and ready to write the next chapter in my book. I’m unsure exactly how and when this story will end but I’m excited about the part I’m penning now. Pick up your pen and let your trials and tribulations be your muse and write away. Until next time, Stay Up and Be Blessed!