To begin is to break your own heart

To begin is to break your own heart.

To choose means to not choose all those other things.

Before you begin, the possibilities are endless. The way your one true love will look, how your first novel will sound on the page. Before you begin, everything is perfect, because before you begin it’s a world of imagination painted in only your best and most favourite colours.

Beginning is a pull into the real world.

The real world is hard.

It is beautiful and surprising and sometimes, at noon on a Tuesday on the roof of an art gallery, you will drink a glass of wine and look at the view and wonder how you will ever leave this spot, this moment, because everything is as right as it could be.

But the real world is also never enough money, and never enough time, and never enough talent, or recognition, or love, or contentedness. The real world is compromise.

Compromise.

I read somewhere that compromise is “halfway happy”, and that is what beginning is. Halfway happy. Not as good as not beginning, safe from disappointment - but also better than not.

What is preferable, unreal perfection or real imperfection.

Knowingly halfway happy, or unknowing and unbegun.

The only thing that is sure is: not to try is not to fail.

To begin is to break your own heart, because it doesn't just risk failing. It is failing. It is already “halfway happy". Real life isn't designed to match what we sketch out in our minds.

But we must begin anyway.

Halfway happy is enough.

To break our own hearts is an underrated strength.