When fear and need are leading the way—informing your decisions, your mood, your perspective, and the very nature of your purview—fine seems pretty good. Fine is safe; it is familiar. It feeds us, it provides shelter, and it gives us a place to catch our breath. There is a very useful place for fine within the context of our lives.
But what if we lose everything that has made our lives fine? What if we risk fine and lose? Can’t you hear your parents (or friends or in-laws—insert your own influences here) telling you, “I told you so! You couldn’t be happy with what you had? You had to have more? You’re selfish. You’re only thinking about yourself.”
On and on they go, with the limiting perspective that has kept them right where they are, the Mayors of Fineville.
I say that fine is not enough. Indeed, it has a very important role to play as we are rebounding from certain experiences. It is a wonderfully welcome plateau and safe haven in which to recharge, refocus, and begin to rebuild. But our vision and our aim need to be for more than fine. Otherwise, we risk the notion of looking back on the decades of fine and asking ourselves with the hard-earned wisdom of our years, “What the hell was I so afraid of?”
Ask any eighty or ninety-year-old and they’ll tell you. I have yet to meet one of them that told me they would strive lower if they could do it all again. The recurring theme in those I’ve spoken with has been that they would be less afraid to try more things. They would not be beholden to their assumed limits and boundaries. They would have squeezed more life out of life. That is not fine.
As an example, look at school-aged kids. I have two wonderful children and, in hearing the daily drama of their lives, I think back as to how I would do it all again so differently. I would be more confident—real confidence, not merely a façade that I’d live into. I would take more chances, ask more girls out, and be more aggressive at the plate playing baseball.
So what’s the difference between you looking at kids and an older person looking at you? You have this opportunity to be that person you would have been—now! Fine has a place, but it is a holding space, not a destination.
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