“You’re crazy.”
I have heard that before. Sometimes it was a warning. Sometimes it was said with a smile. And sometimes I could hear the question hiding underneath it: What if you actually do it?
Yes. What if I do?
What if I take the trip, kiss the person, accept the invitation, follow the idea that makes absolutely no sense to anyone else—and discover that it makes perfect sense to me?
There are moments when I want to do something simply because the thought of it makes me feel wildly, unmistakably alive.
You can feel the exact moment it happens. Your plans are still in place, but they no longer have your full attention.
I know how easy it is to dismiss that feeling. Give it a few days, ask enough people, imagine every possible consequence. By the end, you can make almost anything sound like a bad idea.
Sometimes it is a bad idea.
Sometimes it becomes one of the stories you tell for years.
There is no way to know from the safety of your chair.
That uncertainty has a pulse. I want it in my life.
I want the evenings that run too late because nobody wants to leave. The decision made with a suitcase still open on the bed. The laughter that escapes at exactly the moment life has given me every reason to cry. I want to be capable of loving something before I know whether it will last.
And I want all of it at every age.
Years should give me more stories to draw from, not a smaller appetite for living. I refuse to reach a point where the only things I allow myself to do are the things I have already done.
So if you are waiting for a sign, perhaps the fact that you keep thinking about it is enough to begin.
Go. Try.
Make a beautiful mess of an afternoon. Get it wrong and laugh about it later. Let something surprise you so completely that, for once, you have no prepared answer when someone asks why you did it.
“Because I wanted to” is an answer.
And sometimes it is the beginning of the best story you have.
Silvia
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