Don't let the Wolf in

Don't let the wolf in the gate.  It is hard to let the light through because we can be certain the shit stuff about ourselves is more pertinent to who we are and what we do.  It is hard to let the positives take a true hold on us instead of apathy because we would rather take a back seat and let boredom, banality, basic laziness and a belief our lives are not particularly interesting.  We may make others believe life is amazing through Facebook and Twitter with quirky updates of what we do but, let's face it, most of us sit on a sofa wishing we were doing more than sitting on a sofa.

The wolf likes to creep in though and devour the desires and dreams of our hearts and minds.  How often do you sit and think about things you wish you were doing or had done? How many hours a week do you daydream of things but believe they will never happen because such dreams are unrealistic?  The problem is we can be the wolf to others and tear apart people's dreams.  There's an insightful scene in The Office where Ricky Gervais's Brent is doing an appraisal of Dawn; she dreams of being an illustrator and Brent says that she should keep doing the "doodles" but when it all fails at least she'll have a job as a receptionist.  It's a great scene because this is so often the case; we can dampen people's dreams with our own cynicism and fears.  We can be too scared to step out and do something we have always dreamed of doing because we're afraid of failure and rejection.

But

What we end up doing is painting a false picture of our reality by making others believe our lives are full of interesting, innovative incidents.  Life isn't an episode of Friends where stuff happens all the time, but life also isn't meant to be full of nothingness.  When all you have to talk about is what to watch on television or what someone wrote on Facebook you know you are not living life to the full.  Life is for living and we should remember that we only have one shot.

Ad astra per aspera (through hardships to the stars).  Life is difficult and the thought of doing something new can feel far too strenuous but as the quote states, we can go through difficulties and reach the stars.