A Thought on Living Without Fear

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.” –Theodore Roosevelt

 It is said that of all the words in all the tongues of men, that saddest are those of “it might have been.” Often times in life, our fear of what could happen or how we could fail overcomes our desire to progress and we are left utterly paralyzed in inaction. As we watch the world pass us by, we utter a wish for more courage and bravery. But there must come a moment when we rise above our fear. We must make our wish reality. We must cast off the chains of self doubt and worry and rise toward the light so that we may have our day in the sun.

The greatest enemy we will ever face is that voice inside each of us that tells us that we will never be good enough. It tells us that we are weak and unworthy of achieving that which we desire. I tell you here and now that that voice lies. The greatest gift that God has given us is the free will and the ability to choose who we are and who we will become. Each and every day that we rise we are faced with a choice: do we cower and live in fear while our lives pass us by, or do we dare greatly, pursuing the dreams that we hold so dear? Even if we fail, we fail with the knowledge that we tried, that we gave our very best, and that at the very least we made a valiant effort toward a goal worth fighting for. Even in that failure, there is experience gained. Even in that failure, hope, the greatest and most essential of all human conditions, remains. And with that hope, remains the possibility of redemption.

My friends, we have but one life to live. May we live it well, without regret or fear. May we live it in such a way that at the end, when we stand before the Almighty and are asked to account for our time here on this earth, we can reply that we lived each moment with the courage to pursue the desires of our hearts, that we held on to the hope of a better tomorrow, and that we sought the goodness in the world. May we say that we lived our lives intentionally and with purpose.