I spent the weekend at Wisconsin Dells with my friends that I met in college. The moment that stuck out the most to me came when I reached the top of the stairs for the tallest slide. The young …
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I spent the weekend at Wisconsin Dells with my friends that I met in college. The moment that stuck out the most to me came when I reached the top of the stairs for the tallest slide. The young stranger in front of me in line said, “don’t look down.”
From his perspective, the scariest thing in life is falling without someone there to catch him. As a grown man, I am no longer scared of the well-engineered stairs at a waterpark. As adults, though, we too are afraid of falling with no one to catch us. We make every decision in our life while factoring in the risk involved.
People often say, “don’t live in the past” or “never look back,” but is that the real danger we face? I, for one, love to live in the past and remember all the great times I have had. What we should be saying is “Don’t look down.”
Life seems like such a long thing, but when you actually live it, it goes by in a flash. Similar to any other resource, life’s value stems from how finite it is. When life gets hard, you need to find a way to hold onto the guard rail and stay on the same step you are on. Then, when you are ready, you need to find the courage to take the next step up. The moment you look down, you will start walking back down the steps out of fear. Sure, you may make it to safety, but you will never find the joy that those who made it to the top and rode the slide did.
Most important of all, you decide the steps in your own life. Only you know what is best for you. Taking a step does not mean doing something that makes people think differently of you. Taking a step is making a change or decision in life that makes you a better and happier person.
There will always be those people in your ear that think they know what is best for you. Lucky for them, they have their own set of stairs to climb with a slide on top specially designed to make them happy. You should never avoid making good life decisions just because someone else feels it will set you back. When you do get to go down that slide, enjoy every minute of it, because those are the things you can and should live in the past about.
