Go Out and Fight For It

It is late now as I begin this post. I will be awake at 5 in the morning for work, yet I choose to go without sleep to see if I can crystalize some thoughts that are bubbling inside of my head. If I do not write this now, it may never be written...

This is tough. I have literally started six different thoughts, erased them and I am instead choosing to make you aware of me starting and stopping.

I want to share with you a younger, much more naive David Branin. Though at the same time driven, ambitious and a quietly confident. I want to share with you a goal of mine that is now more secret than it is public. And in my younger days it is possible that the reverse was true.

Life has it's ways of humbling us all. If you are undecided on what you aim to do with your life, that can be a miserable place to be. Especially if you strive to make a difference in this world. And at the same time, just because you believe you know what you want and you commit to it, doesn't mean what you want is going to come easy. That kind of reiterates what I wrote about in my post about Wanting Vs. Committing. It's so easy to want something. It is in that transition to fully committing to something where we discover how challenging life can be. And as we are tested what emerges is how bad do we really want it. Of course most will stop themselves.

Writing this makes me think of a saying I acquired from Les Brown that I had memorized for years. I may not have it word for word, but this is pretty close.

If you want something bad enough to go out and fight for it. To work day and night for it. To give up your time, your peace and sleep for it. And all that you dream and scheme is about it. And life seems useless and worthless without it. And if you gladly sweat for it and fret for it and plan for it. And lose all your terror of the opposition for it. And if you simply go after that thing that you want with all of your capacity, strength and sagacity. Faith, hope, and confidence and stern for tenacity. If neither cold poverty, famish, or cold sickness or pain of body and brain can keep you away from that thing that you want!!! If darker than grim, you besiege and beset it, with the help of God you’ll get it!!!!

You read that and you clearly get that he isn't just speaking about wanting something, he is talking about tenacious commitment. I am very likely going to have to print this out and have this on my wall. What I love about Les Brown is that he delivers the above passage with such force. All these years later, I can still hear his voice booming inside my head.

Now are you ready for my secret? Or what has become my secret. When I started out on this journey to pursue a film career, it wasn't purely for money or for fame. At my core my goal was to impact millions upon millions of people. I wanted to positively impact the lives of more than a million people. This goal of mine is still inside my heart though I am not as verbal about it anymore. As I wrote above, life has it's ways of humbling us all.

The optimist I have trained myself to be believes this goal can come to pass in my lifetime. Even if it doesn't (as I write this I have 6 'Followers', so there is much work to be done) it provides me the ultimate goal to shoot for.

I see how precious life is. I see how fragile and vulnerable it can be. And as I do, it charges me to do more. To live and love courageously.