AS a writer very often I face uncertain times, and have to make decisions regarding my future. Quite often I’ve hesitated, but one story retold by another writer has always helped me make decisions, and not hesitate too much. This is the other writer’s story, through an incident he captured:
“When I was a young writer with a very uncertain income, I went into a quiet park to contemplate a serious problem. For four years I had been engaged but didn’t dare to marry. There was no way of foreseeing how little I might earn in the next year; moreover, we had long cherished a plan of living and writing in Paris, Rome, Vienna, London–everywhere. But how could we go three thousand miles away from everything that was familiar and secure, without the certainty of some money now and then?
At that moment I looked up and saw a squirrel jump from one high tree to another. He appeared to be aiming for a limb so far out of reach that the leap looked like suicide. He missed–but landed, safe and unconcerned, on a branch several feet lower. Then he climbed to his goal, and all was well. An old man sitting on the bench said, “Funny, I’ve seen hundreds of ’em jump like that, especially when there are dogs around and they can’t come down to the ground. A lot of ’em miss, but I’ve never seen any hurt in trying.” Then he chuckled. “I guess they’ve got to risk it if they don’t want to spend their lives in one tree!”
I thought: A squirrel takes a chance–have I less nerve than a squirrel? We were married in two weeks, scraped up enough money for our passage and sailed across the Atlantic–jumping off into space, not sure what branch we’d land on. I began to write twice as fast and twice as hard as ever before. And to our amazement we promptly soared into the realm of respectable incomes.
Since then, whenever I have to choose between risking a new venture or hanging back, those five little words run through my thoughts: “Once there was a squirrel..” And sometimes I hear the old man on the park bench saying, “They’ve got to risk it if they don’t want to spend their lives in one tree.”
Yes that’s true isn’t it? Not only with writers, but with anybody who follow a dream. I don’t know what your dream is dear reader. But like the squirrel, you need to jump or you will spend the rest of your life on the same tree. Let’s pursue our dreams and jump to the next tree..!
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