Wise words

A friend of mine wrote this last night and I think it's absolutely perfect. So here ya go...

a couple of hundred years ago, benjamin franklin shared with the world the secret of his success: 'never leave that 'til tomorrow that which you could do today.' this is the man who discovered electricity.. you'd think more of us would listen to what he had to say. i don't know why we put things off, but if i had to guess, i'd say it has a lot to do with fear. fear of failure.. fear of pain.. fear of rejection.. sometimes the fear is just of making a decision, because what if you're wrong? what if you make a mistake you can't undo? whatever it is we're afraid of, one thing holds true – there comes a time when the pain of not doing the thing gets worse than the fear of doing it.

the early bird catches the worm.. a stitch in time saves nine.. he who hesitates is lost.. we can't pretend we haven't been told. we've all heard the proverbs, heard the philosophers, heard our grandparents warning us about wasted time, heard the damn poets urging us to 'seize the day'. still sometimes we have to see for ourselves. we have to make our own mistakes. we have to learn our own lessons. we have to sweep today's possibility under tomorrow's rug until we can't anymore.. until we finally understand for ourselves what benjamin franklin meant: that knowing is better than wondering.. that waking is better than sleeping.. and that even the biggest failure, even the worst, most intractable mistake beats the hell out of never trying.

but with that comes pain. pain comes in all forms. the small twinge, a bit of soreness, the random pain that we live with everyday. then there is the kind of pain you just can't ignore, a level of pain so great that it blocks out everything else, makes the rest of your world fade away until all we can think about is how much we hurt. how we manage our pain is up to us. we self-medicate, ride it out, embrace it, ignore it, and for some of us the best way to manage pain is to just push through it.

pain.. sometimes you just have to ride it out, hope it goes away on its own, hope the wound that caused it heals. there are no solutions, no easy answers. you just breathe deep and wait for it to subside. most of the time, pain can be managed, but sometimes the pain gets you when you least expect it, it hits way below the belt and doesn't let up. this pain you just have to fight through, because the truth is you can't outrun it and life always makes more.

communication's the first thing we really learn in life. the funny thing is, once we grow up, learn our words and really start talking, the harder it becomes to know what to say.. or how to ask for what we really need.

at the end of the day, there are some things you just can't help but talk about.. some things we just don't want to hear.. and some things we say because we can't be silent any longer. some things are more than what you say, they're what you do. some things you say because you have no other choice. some things you keep to yourself. and not too often, but every now and then, some things simply speak for themselves.

after careful consideration and many sleepless nights, here's what i've decided:

there's no such thing as a grown up. we move on, we move out, we move away from our families and form our own.. but the basic insecurities, the basic fears and all those old wounds just grow up with us. we get bigger, we get taller, we get older.. but for the most part, we're still a bunch of kids running around the playground trying desperately to fit in.