Will You Do It?

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” – Mark Twain “I too have had my dreams: ay, known indeed the crowded visions of a fiery youth which haunt me still.” – Oscar Wilde Do you have a plan that makes you feel half crazy and the other half scared? Are you attempting to do something that's far bigger than you are? Tell me about it in an email. Send it to [email protected]. I don't promise to help you. Heck, I don't even promise to respond. But I do promise to read your words and smile. Or maybe shake my head in amazement. Or perhaps even mumble a prayer for you. While speaking at the Sorbonne in Paris, April 23, 1910, audacious Teddy Roosevelt looked the French coldly in the eyes and delivered his famous admonition, “It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.” And you wondered why the French tend not to like Americans. Tell me the audacious thing you're attempting to do. Send a tale that would make Teddy proud. Roy H. Williams