A friend introduced me to songs by Smokey Robinson back in our postgraduate days. She was fond of rich music that told stories, stories she would weave into our daily conversation. The story lover in me was hooked.
Of Smokey songs the one that is webbed in my memory is “living next door to Alice.”
The song writer tells the story about Alice, a girl he lived next door to and whom he seemed to have loved with all his heart.
In the 24 years he lived next door to Alice it seems he never gathered the courage to ask out Alice. When Alice left, the man in the story deeply mourned his lost chances and realized that he will never get used to not living next door to Alice.
May be he never asked Alice out because
- he thought Alice would say no.
- he didn’t want to ruin the friendship; talk about wanting to remain in the comfort zone. There is often that that makes you.
Many of us have lived some version of this song too.
There are dreams we have never given a chance; may be ideas to create something, may be desire to change someone’s lives, whatever our dreams are.
We are like a lover who has never gathered the courage to ask their Alice out. We have never said to some of our dreams, “dreams I love you very much and I want us to try.” We have never said “dreams can I take you out on a first date and see if you and I are meant to be.”
For years we never try, we wait for that perfect chance and one day
- time is no longer on our side,
- the resources we could have accessed are no longer available,
- the help we could have asked for is no longer available.
It turns out that years can slide by without us taking that first step.
We do have our reasons too.
We are also just like the man in the song.
We think our dreams will say no to us.
May be our dreams will say no but just may be they will say yes.
You have to be determined that fear will no longer be an excuse to not asking your dreams out.
If you don’t push aside the fear of rejection, the fear that makes you hesitant to try, you never will find out if life can possibly say yes to you.
You never find out if your dreams would have said yes.
And what if your dreams say no
That is okay too.
May be your dreams wouldn’t have worked out. But you would have tried.
What you ought to remember is that when you try it isn’t just about your dreams saying yes to you. There is a blessing in taking the wrong turns, you find yourself and find your essence. You will have a great sense of pride knowing that you tried when all the others feared.
We tend to like the less riskier zone, the friendship zone.
We yield to the temptation to cling to the known and comfortable zone. Ask yourself what would your life look like if you break the mold and move into uncomfortable zones.
Your turn
Surely you don’t want many years of your life to slide by and they you don’t have a clue how you ended up where you are. You don’t want to reach the years of grace and wonder how fast time has flown by without action on your side.
They say years from now you will not regret what you did but what you did not do. Now I ask you, go knock at Alice door and say “Alice I like you let’s try this.” Take your dreams for a test drive. You too can build the life of your dreams.
What dreams are you afraid of chasing, go into the comment section and share with us.