Focus

I had a friend who used to say “if you are not living life on the edge, you are taking up too much room.”  I like that.  I guess that is obvious because I am quoting it.
I know that much of what I write is like setting myself up.  Right now things are fairly quiet, but life happens to us all.  The thing for me about going out on a limb is, limbs break.  It is much more comfortable at the trunk of the tree, but I find it is sort of boring.
I could though stay where I am comfortable, and offer all sorts of advice to someone who ventures out.  It amazes me how so often those who have never been there, seem to know so much.  Theorizing is easy when I have never been someplace.  Actually doing something is most often messier.
I know it is what they do, but I have so much admiration for the squirrels and monkeys I see going from tree to tree without a second thought.  They glide and swing through the tree tops, and cover huge distances.
Me, I would only need to look down once and I would be frozen to the spot.  In this case looking down for me is not advisable.  I need to focus my attention on my goal, rather than the potential problems.  Sure, I need to have accounted for the problems, but with the end in mind.  If I don’t keep the end in mind, I will never venture out.  It can be scary out there.
As someone quoted recently and has been said, “life wasn’t meant to be easy.”  For me in this circumstance that is true.  Between me and my goal there are many potential problems.  It would sure be easier to stay where I am, and keep under the radar, and not make waves. But I am a “give it my best shot” person, and not a “what might have been” person.
I need to be careful though, that I don’t decide to settle some place short of my goal.  It is easy to climb down from the tree and extol the virtues of where I am, but I will never know my potential.  If my original goal was where I am now then well and good.  Chances are though, there was a good reason I set the original gaol, and I am selling myself short.
I have seen this so often in sport.  Folk start out in a flurry.  They are going to be the next Don Bradman, or Dennis Lillie or the best they can be in whatever sport they have chosen.  Then other priories come into play.  Before long the original goal is but a distant memory.  That is ok as long as then new priorities are not a cop out.  I tend to equip myself for whatever my goal is.
When I take photographs, I look through the lens and ensure what I want to take, is in focus.  In my life, when I have a focus, anything that happens is a stepping stone, rather than a stumbling block.