It was one of the stupidest decisions I’ve ever made.

Driving home from a late night out in the big city with a few friends. In front of me was a wide open stretch of highway which for some unknown reason inspired me to wonder just how fast my car could actually go. Fueled by a potentially lethal combination of teenage invincibility and alcohol, I pressed the pedal as hard as I could just to see exactly how fast my ’73 Toyota could go.

My experiment was cut short by a rather unsettling noise coming from the rear tires. Apparently the high rate of speed I was traveling at created a great deal of heat causing the retreads on my tires to separate from the tires, which I discovered after stopping to see if I could find where the noise was coming from. I had no idea that was even possible until I held a piece of a tire in my hand. After that experience, I had no intention of ever finding out exactly how fast that car could go.

Things certainly could have easily turned out much differently.

This far more mature and long-sober version of me often ponders a different sort of experiment. What would the outcome be if I pushed myself to my limits. Like, if I gave life all I had to give, pedal to the metal as they say. What if I viewed my life as an open highway, fueled by possibility and curiosity, and showed up fully, shared my gifts fully, loved and trusted fully, detached from needing life to be the way I needed it to be. What could I accomplish, experience, create, and become?

Potential has always haunted me. I’ve habitually felt I’ve never fully lived up to mine. Others reminded me quite often that I wasn’t. I’d been too busy trying to understand my life instead of actually living it. I had this imaginary scoreboard in my head somehow quantifying where I was in life compared to where I thought I should be in life. Self-compassion wasn’t something I was ever any good at.

In time, though, the tough self-love of holding myself relentlessly accountable for not being where I told myself I needed to be was gradually replaced with more of a sense of wonder about my life. When I was no longer keeping score, when I was no longer beating myself down, I was free to just go forward to experiment and explore. No longer quantifying where I was allowed me to embody a mindset of possibility and curiosity. I no longer needed to live up to a life I had told myself I needed to live. 

Now, I just live. Nothing to prove to anyone. And more importantly, nothing to prove to myself.

I may never know exactly how far I can go. 

And that’s OK.

I’m going anyway. 

Photo by Andrés Alagón on Unsplash

Leave a comment