definitely not like garth brooks.

It may seem a funny title, but right now it fits. Here's how. There's a song Garth Brooks sings that practically everyone knows, and rightfully so, it's a good song. It's called "The Dance." My favorite part is the piano at the beginning of the song, but that's a little off topic. The part I'm referring to is when he says, "And now I'm glad I didn't know / The way it all would end / the way it all would go / Our lives are better left to chance / I could have missed the pain / But I'd of had to miss the dance." He's saying that if even if he knew how it all would have turned out, even the fact that it failed and it hurt, he would have done it anyway.

Now me, I'm not that way. I rarely try things that I know I'll be bad at, and I definitely don't do things that I know I'm bad at (which is why I stay away from bowling and softball and basketball and golf and many more things generally). Occasionally there will be an exception to this rule, but it's very rare. I don't like failure. I don't like embarrassment. And I definitely don't like pain. Most things I do in my life are really to avoid these particular circumstances. I think that's a big part of my shyness. What if I say something wrong, or what if they don't like me? Thoughts that frighten me from speaking to just about anyone that I don't know without them speaking first. And believe me, this tendency is usually misinterpreted as snobbery, but in reality it's the opposite, just plain fear.

After many years, I have been able to conquer small parts of this fear. I can be outgoing when I have to be. Let's face it, you can't be a very good journalist without some kind of ability to talk to people and ask questions. So I can do it, but it still scares me. I have to write out every question I can think of and every follow up question and have them sitting right in front of me the whole time, or I forget them all. I often wonder how it's possible I've met anyone throughout my life, but God has been good to me. I know some fabulous people.

So you can only imagine that taking chances is not really a part of my personality. If I can't count on it being a good thing or being successful, then I won't even try to count on it. Why waste the energy worrying about it when I can be certain. However, certainty eludes me quite often. I can probably count 3 decisions that I've made as decisions that I was certain about when I made them, and they all happened within a year of each other.

Making decisions is something I loathe doing. I just can't take the "will it bother someone," "will they agree," "is this really the right thing to do" fight that goes on in my head day after day, moment after moment. Pile that on top of 1,000 other thoughts that are flying through my head at any given second (what can I say, I'm a multi-tasker), and it's enough to make anyone goes crazy.

The problem is that in life, you always have to take chances. Most of them are small, and you don't think twice about them. You probably don't even know you're taking them. You don't notice until the big ones come up. It's in those that you find, at least I do, a capacity for worry you didn't know you had. I don't put myself out there for people or for circumstances, and that also makes life difficult.

So the trouble with chances is that you have to take them, and that means taking the hurt and embarrassment and failure with them sometimes. In the end, all things work to the good of my life. If it were not some of those chances I wouldn't be here at this desk, or know you, or be the person I am today. Being human means messing up sometimes, and it can mean experiencing pain sometimes too. But I know that the pain is really where some of the most beautiful moments come from. So instead of looking forward to the possible hurt, I'm going to look forward to the beauty of life on either side of chance.