Living takes a will . . one courageous, trusting and hopeful enough to overlook fear, the “what-ifs” and the scrapes of falling in failure. We cannot dare live, with our eyes closed, behind our protective walls and within our safest confines. Living means we face our fears with courage, we endeavor to meet our challenges head on and we keep climbing no matter how many times we slip or fall from this rung or the next. Living isn’t easy, without obstacle; and it surely isn’t done in the safety of our mind’s making. It takes faith, hope, trust, perseverance as well as a surrender to our inability to control every detail and every outcome. But living is worth every scraped knee we endure, each failure, all of our attempts, each broken heart or broken dream. For in getting those, we lived! 

No one ever experiences anything worthwhile when merely existing. Push yourself to go beyond today and every day you get by purposefully living rather than merely existing through them. How do we do that and what is the difference? Living means we are already outside of whatever comfort zone we may have set up for ourselves; it means we dare to realize our dreams, to attempt to make our desires reality and it means we don’t give up on ourselves! Living, as opposed to just existing, means that when faced with challenges, we don’t hide, run or flee. We aren’t going to outrun all of our challenges, so the sooner we learn to step up to the plate each one represents, the better. It is life-affirming, confidence-building and esteem-igniting each and every time we take life’s challenges on for the sake of passing the tests and trials each represents to us. If we run, hide, seek to escape or let others do the heavy-lifting in life, we never learn to trust in ourselves, to believe in ourselves or to have faith and hope in our future! 

Just like with our first steps, our first developmental stages through infancy, life never ceases to present to us challenges and learning experiences which we must overcome and pass in order that we may grow and develop into new stages! And each of those new stages brings more of the same by way of tests and trials which we must learn to pass successfully in order that we grow and develop for what lies ahead. Imagine if we had chosen in our toddler years to remain helpless and infantile? No one does that because adulthood represents an promising period which prompts our desire for more. All children seem to want to leapfrog through their development, eager to grow up before their time. Why then do we suddenly find our scraped knees, fears and failures so overwhelming at some advancing age, that we wish to halt our own progress? Keep pushing through challenges, obstacles and all the mess life brings! The only person you really hurt when you let fear, doubt, insecurity or apathy win is you! Make it your goal to live today, with a will, courage, faith and hope. Don’t let life beat you back, down or out.