Recently a man passed me with a t-shirt reading, “think twice; act once”   My initial thought was the depth of this principle, but upon further reflection I had to laugh.  Anyone who knows me well understands I often do the opposite – “think once; act twice…or maybe three or four times.”  While I love the principle of thinking twice and acting once I also recognize that too often people “think twice; and never act”.  Instead they continue to think, and think, and think.  They attempt to contemplate everything that may go wrong, to have every outcome lined out, and have an answer to every question.  The truth is that eventually the Wright brothers had to climb in the plane and attempt to fly.

The great Winston Churchill once declared, “I never worry about action, but only inaction.”  Another writer stated, “To get something you never had, you have to do something you never did.”  I have read one of the greatest regrets for many is not necessarily what they have done, but things they never attempted, dreams they never pursued, ideas they never launched. 

My wife and I read a book some time ago.  It is a story of a family that sold everything, bought a boat, and left New York to sail down the East Cost, around the Caribbean, through the Panama Canal, and across the Pacific.  Ultimately it is a tale of adventure at sea and a disaster that saved them.  At one point in the story the wife writes, 

“But here is where history caught up with us.  Here is where we would have to live out our own mortal adventure on this planet and not just observe.  Here we would share a story with the frightened souls of the “Julia Ann”.  If you want to know what it was like for the people of the “Julia Ann” that night, and in the days following, you can simply crash your boat where they crashed theirs and suffer as they suffered, and that’s the best way to learn…You need not go that far, but my point is that getting an education is about getting out in to the world and seeing and feeling the planet for yourself…If real life catches you by the heel sometimes, it is worth it. Life is short anyway, so it may as well be beautiful.”

 Mark Twain said it best, “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things 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.”

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