Go Big

Go Big!

John Paul Derryberry

I'm a flawed individual, often a walking contradiction; a loud dude who prefers vacations in the middle of nowhere to bathe in quiet; a guy who enjoys attention but wants to share the limelight with others. I'm also a man who attempts to feel with all his emotions but will answer, "fine," when asked how he is feeling. I also know the eye roll coming from readers; reading the above sentences and thinking, this guy is about to explain how he is so different.

I'm not different, not selling some weird concoction promising results, and most certainly not saying anyone should regularly follow my advice. Sometimes I'm right, sometimes I'm wrong, but I always like observing interactions between humans. I'm really just a regular white guy who decided to share his thoughts every Sunday and tell stories about mental and emotional health when I'm invited to do so. Also, sometimes, when I'm not asked to do so.

But there is part of me that would like to inject just a little of this advice into everyone who has ever struggled to go for the life they desperately wanted. Go big; swing for the freaking fences every once in a while. It's just a tremendous feeling when the world aligns, and you can live the life you wanted for a few minutes. And when we swing and miss and fail, it hurts. Oh man, does it hurt! But we have broken the mundaneness of life with excitement, nerves, and uncertainty. We are feeling, which is the point of the human experience.

Again, I'm not here to measure or judge the bigness of your go-big moment. For my daughter, it was getting on the bus for school, which caused a week of emotions in our house. Maybe it's finally dating again, going for the promotion, just simply wearing an outfit you didn't think you could pull off. For somebody else I know, it was taking control of their career by starting a project they believed would improve culture. For others, it's just getting out of bed in the morning. We have to, as a society, understand that big moments come in all shapes and sizes, and our moments should never block out others. There is plenty of room for everyone to have some big moments.

I started by saying I'm flawed; in reality, we are all flawed individuals. Too often, those who have found a way to have their big moments forget to remind those who haven't that they are still flawed after their enormous success. So go ahead, attempt to change that neighborhood that is run down, move to that city you always wanted to live in, or eat lunch alone in a public place. Our culture is better when more of us go big because we don't know what we are capable of until we do. As for me and my go-big moments, I'm not stopping any time soon. The success has me smiling, and the failures have me learning. Learning all these years later is a big thing, too.