Shots in the Dark can Hit their Mark

It is only Tuesday and while busy, the week is going well. Feeling encouraged by the amount of wonderful family, friends, and even a few strangers who seemed to enjoy the last blog post, working on an exciting new social media project at work, and finally making some headway on a few personal writing projects that have been sitting in the “to-do” box in my mind for a while.

I’ve had a few days like this – where I get a tangible feeling of anticipation, of potential, of being on the brink of something. It’s a kind of tingling around my brain, as though someone is massaging my head, waking it up to take in all of the little things that could be pre-cursors to the next big step in my life. I attribute it to the story-teller in me, always looking for the foreshadowing in the stories I’m recording every day.

A new band called Lucius, who I’m convinced wrote their first album as an anthem to my 20-something years, has a song that I think is about this anticipation feeling. The title, “Two of us on the Run,” was enough to draw me in initially because when I’m working to understand or pursue something that seems a bit too big, a bit out of reach, it often feels like I’m running. Like I’m just trying to move forward as fast as possible so no one has time to tell me I won’t make it there, that it’s too far, that a million other people are faster than me. I imagine this song is about how these two were running towards their dream of being musicians, of sharing their unique sound and honest, relate-able messages with the world.

The phrase that particularly strikes me is:

And now we pass so many people on the road
They could come along, I wish they’d been told
They may call it a shot in the dark
From what we know, it’s not unheard of

I think weeks like this, when I feel like things are going well, are the weeks I’m looking up again, that I’m joining the dreamers on the race to their dreams.

And I want everyone to have days like that. At some point, and perhaps even most of the time, we are all those people on the road, taking ourselves out of the race for some reason or another. When a brief moment of tingling-potential comes along, we have to take it and run until we grow tired again. That way, even when we’re standing on the side of the road, our muscles will at least have a faint memory of the feeling of motion. With that memory, we can’t stand still for long.

With the right resources and determination, shots in the dark can hit their mark.