All of our journeys are a gift. Though we all are on a different journey, we each have been equipped with the different experiences, the different circumstances, and the different shoes necessary to endure it and make it everything it was meant to be.
A throwback Nike commercial featuring legendary basketball player Michael Jordan got me thinking about how we each have our journeys and our own destinies to fulfill. Push aside the exact details of our lives, and the only things that really matter are our perception and what we make of everything that we’ve been given. Although Jordan is known by his legendary shoes that people connect to his historical career, he knows that they don’t have everything to do with his success.
In the commercial, Jordan says: “It’s not about the shoes. It’s about knowing where you are going. Not forgetting where you started. It’s about having the courage to fail. Not breaking when you’re broken. Taking everything you have been given and making something better. It’s about work before glory and what’s inside of you. It’s doing what they say you can’t. It’s not about the shoes, it’s about what you do in them. It’s about being who you are born to be.”
Watch it now:
As you walk in your shoes throughout your life, there will be moments when you feel beside yourself. When you feel like your actions, your purpose, or your reason for being mean nothing. When you feel like you’re on a steep journey and giving up on yourself seems better than what’s up ahead. When you feel like your back is against the wall and all you can do is scream, hoping to be freed from the challenges you’re up against. Yet as Jordan shows, these moments define who you are and what’s inside of you.
These complicated, exhausting, faulting, and hard moments are make the journey beautiful. They bring about your passions, your talents, your drive, and everything inside of you needed to become who you were born to be. They prove to you how you can take everything that you’ve been given and make something of out of it –despite it being negative or positive.
No, we can’t change the life we’ve been given… we can’t change the shoes we’re meant to walk in… and we can’t change the cards we’ve been dealt. But we can change our attitude and our perspective. We can choose to take the journey we’ve been given for what it is and embrace it, giving it the best that we’ve got. The journey is tiring, enlightening, and annoying all at the same time, however, it’s worth in the end.
It’s the journey of our lives that makes life worth loving. Because even when we are detached from ourselves and feel like we can’t go on, we get these moments of hope that suggest there is so much more to the journey that life up ahead. It suggests that this journey, these passions we’ve been given, and the commitment that we have for this journey are going be much more meaningful not only to us, but also those around us.
Life is too short to not become all that lies within you. Life too short not to keep pushing yourself to move forward. Life is too short not to be brave. Life is too short not rise to the challenge of your journey, persevering through all the pain and the failures that may come your way. Life is too short not to keep going, until you’ve shown the world the greatness within you. Life is too short.
For the love of your journey, keep walking.
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