“Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald

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People always want to tell you all the possible ways in which you could fail.

All the ways in which something bad might happen, punctuating each quivering what if with the sensitive shiver of a prey animal.

“There’s no money in writing. That job market is unstable. You need multiple sources of income. Otherwise you might starve. The housing market is about to crash. Downtown is dangerous at night. Are you sure you want to try that? It’s a lot of hard work. You shouldn’t marry young, what if you get divorced? What if you regret being a mother? What if the baby is retarded, or dies young, or grows to hate you? Are you sure you want to commit to monogamy? What if you aren’t satisfied? What if one day, he just decides to stop loving you and your heart shatters on the floor, irreparably damaged? What if nothing works out? What if you die? You are going to die. What if you die in the worst way possible?”

“Maybe you just shouldn’t love at all. In fact, there’s nothing riskier than giving away your heart to the fluttering chasm that is another human being. Better to keep your heart guarded, in a safe place, in a cold and unchanging place. Lock the door. Slide the bolt. Put a bullet in the gun. Stand by the door, standing feet hip-width apart, clenched teeth, and wait.”

After twenty or so years of people talking to you in this way, you start to see the world not as a place full of opportunity, but as a series of hidden traps, artfully placed, that must be avoided at all costs. You become a kind of burrowing animal who learns to keep their head pointed at the ground. Better to not risk it. It’s a behavior learned by slaves and peasants who have seen that stepping out of line gets them a sword at their throat.

Even when a great opportunity is handed to you, you’re looking at your feet in the dirt, a swallow trapped in your throat, dreading the moment the earth itself gives way and consumes you.

You feel as if you are keeping yourself safe. You’re being sensible. Rational. You only take calculated risks. You are trying to hide the fact that you’re just a coward.

And all that time spent worrying about what could go wrong means you’ve missed out on trying to figure out how you could make things work out instead.

You could have been building a bridge to heaven. You could have, at the very least, begun to search for the bricks. And if you were looking for possibility, for the way through, you would’ve seen the angels that waited, spun through with glowing filaments, that were waiting to help guide you.

Instead, you kept looking down at the dirt.

So all you found was more dirt.

Even now I feel the idea of “what if it all goes wrong?” attempting to suffocate me. Habits learned at a young age are difficult to change. It’s a conscious effort of will. Every thought must be interrogated. Every neural pathway I’ve created must be buried and repaved. The habits are so intertwined with who I am that I essentially have to create a new personality for myself.

I try not to think of all the time I wasted worrying about what if. Even for little things. I hesitated to post about reviving my grandpa’s old business, Christian Cheese, because I dreaded that something might go wrong. What if we can’t do it, and we have to close the business, and then I have to explain to all these excited people I told and let them down? What if the entire town aligns against me, because they look at me and can see a failure?

Well, who cares?

If I were smarter I’d care more about the potential negatives of what would happen if I didn’t relentlessly pursue what I wanted. I’d be worried about becoming the person who sat alone and shivering in a dark room, in dirtied white clothing, clutching the last piece of my safety before it crumbled underneath me.

That’s often why people kill themselves. They eliminate every enemy until they are forced, finally, to eliminate the last thing that can hurt them - themselves.

What if?

What if the screaming hook of your disappointing paralysis emerged from your throat and ripped your pathetic life away as punishment?

What if every moment you wasted wondering what could go wrong made you a little smaller, a little weaker, a little less capable?

What if over the years even your dreams became brittle and weak things because you abused them for so long, and now you’re unable to even imagine the beautiful things that you’re capable of?’

We don’t have to live like this.

Jung understood that the world is haunted by living symbols. We are living through mythology even in our most mundane actions, and every decision we make has cosmic significance. We can eat our children like Saturn. We can betray those who dare to look at us like we are Gorgons. We can fall in love like Eros. We can bleed for the truth like Christ.

If you want to be a hero you need to pick up your sword and move when you hear the call to action.

You need to pluck out the arrow and keep going when it pierces your armor.

You need to become someone who looks toward the horizon of who you want to be.

Teach Robots Love is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.