Stop, Stop, Stop, Stop!

Excerpt From Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert:

“Around the age of fifteen, I somehow figured out that my fear had no variety to it, no depth, no substance, no texture. I noticed that my fear never changed, never delighted, never offered a surprise twist or an unexpected ending. My fear was a song with only one note—only one word, actually—and that word was “STOP!”

My fear never had anything more interesting or subtle to offer than that one emphatic word, repeated at full volume on an endless loop: “STOP, STOP, STOP, STOP!”

Which means that my fear always made predictably boring decisions, like a choose-your-own-ending book that always had the same ending: nothingness.

You can choose to stop. You can choose to not matter. You can, for sure, find a hole and crawl back into it.

Or you can be courageous and keep making things better for those you engage with. You can choose to be a contribution, be a gift, be love, be art.

Totally up to you.

“We must risk delight,” he wrote. “We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world.”

~ Jack Gilbert, from Elizabeth Gilbert's Big Magic