Total Distance for today: 0
Total Distance for Trip: approx. 233 miles
STATUS: Preparing for meeting at Mayor’s Office in Detroit about Entrepreneurial Academy – Then the skate resumes!
Choices
Choices: They are life, and they are everything. We choose to drag ourselves out of bed every day. We choose to go to work. We choose our friends. Even when we are passive and don’t bother to make a choice, we are actually making a choice: the choice to be passive.
Choices: They are often disguised as intersections with “no turn” signs. You may think that you have no option but to stick with your current job, career, location, or lifestyle. You may think that you must build another man’s house and not your own. You may think that the world has predetermined your limits, your boundaries, and the potential inside you. On all accounts, you would be wrong.
Choices: They may be deceptive in their promise of reward. You may think it wiser, safer, and better to follow the general path “laid-out for you.” You may think it logical to only pursue that which is directly beneficial to you and the people you care about. So shall you limit your reward to that which touches your person alone. It may seem as though the hard path, the untamed wilderness, and the land without trail lead only to suffering and pain. It may seem as though safety, certainty, comfort, and an easy path are to be desired. But choose the beaten trail, the easy road, the coziness of certainty, and tell me that you have not lost something of that which makes you alive. Tell me that the reward for your coziness begins to match the power, intensity, and beauty of the journey down a path you make for yourself. Tell me these things, and I will show you someone who is self-deceived and empty of life.
Choices: They are not big or small, they are only choices. Let your conscience always point you toward that choice which leads to greatness. Let not the gravity of the consequence alter the choice that would otherwise have gazed toward greater heights. Let not cowardice find its home in you or plant its seed of miserable ease in your heart. Take heart in your pain, for through your courage, you will give birth to a new strength inside yourself: one that can laugh at every pain that ever beset you.
The Triumph of Life
Choices: They reveal the character of the chooser. Let your character be one that finds its energy, excitement, and life in pursuit of the impossible challenge. Let your heart laugh at the word “impossible” until “impossible” begins to feel bashful and gives way to the force of the momentum with which you move. Be so bold as to laugh through your fears, and others will learn to take heart in the strength you carry. Joyful laughter will surround you. Let your strength not be arrogance but confident giving. Let the gift you give be the gift that you receive: strength, connection, and the adventure of a life well lived. Be a friend to man, woman, child, nature, and life itself. Be a friend to them, even as they reject you, deny you, and beat you down, and you will show that you are stronger than any possible opposing will. Do you perform for a hostile audience or no audience at all? Great! Let your performance be all the more heroic, because you perform in spite of hollow mocking and hollow air. Let your will be the strengthening, growth, and triumph of life itself, and you will be free.
