I don’t know what to tell you

Today I’m going to leave you with a gallery of images, but first I want to speak directly to readers of Ubi Libertas Blog who aspire to do what Deb and I are doing now — or to do what we did two years ago, when we traveled in search of The Real America.

I know you’re out there, because many of you have told me about what you dream of doing. And as far as I know, most of you haven’t done it yet.

You have your reasons, I’m sure. I once had my own.

On the matter of doubt, yes, we all have doubts. It’s the great inertia of human nature. But consider the possibility that you’re the only thing in your way — when you give nagging doubts power over your actions, it’s self-immobilizing.

“Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all.”
John Galt

Once you’ve vanquished doubts (or muzzled them, at least), you still have to move. And you must keep moving. To generate motion, though, first you have to choose.

The choices we tend think about are do this, go that direction, associate with this or that person, and so on. I contend that there’s another, more foundational kind of choosing — consciously creating a mindset that authorizes you to make choices consistent with whatever it is that you dream and do.

“…If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”
Henry David Thoreau

I’d like to point out three words in the first clause of that quotation — advance (move), confidently (mindset) and direction (forward, toward). Each is its own choice; all are essential.

I can’t tell you what to dream or do. I can’t make your choices. But you keep saying that you know what you want.

Well, then, choose it.