What is the hardest part of a journey?
Is it the toil and tribulations you come across along the way? The obstacles that you are forced to overcome?
Or perhaps it is getting to your destination, only to find that you still have much farther to go. Or that it wasn’t what you felt it would or should be. Disappointment.
Could it be convincing others that the path you are on is important to you? Ignoring the nay-sayers and the critics that assume your dreams are folly and believe you will fail?
I don’t think it is any of these things.
I believe the hardest part of the journey is the moment before you take your first step.
Your greatest challenge is summoning up the courage to lift that foot off the ground.
Once the foot is up, then it is up. You have momentum, albeit only a smidge. But it is a start.
But a moment earlier you were stationary. You had yet to take action. The journey was only a figment of your imagination. A glimmer in your eye that had not yet been born into reality.
Before that action takes place, you are still stuck. You are still the same. You have yet to go from who you were to who you will become.
And that is a scary place to be. You don’t know what is ahead.
Sure, you may plan. But you can only plan so far. At a certain point planning is an excuse to delay taking action. “Considering all the variables” is just fancy talk for “afraid to move forward.”
Your first step doesn’t have to be perfect. Your second step sure won’t be. You might have a hundred steps that are wobbly and unsure — almost comedically uncoordinated.
But if you don’t start, you don’t improve. If the first step isn’t taken, then your thousandth step where you display incredibly coordinated gracefulness and mastery will never be realized.
You’re already standing still. What is the harm with taking a step?
Then, take another. And another. And a hundred more.
Is it the right path? How can you know if you never walk on it?
It is like wondering if food is delicious without ever tasting it.
It might be nauseating. Or it might be exquisite. The path might have a dead end, or it might lead to the top of the mountain.
But if you don’t commit to the action, then you can’t learn from the failures, or reap the rewards.
One step.
Go on. Take it. Let’s see what happens.