starting, obscurity, looking up

The starting of something seldom stands out as the pinnacle of achievement.

Yeah, Taylor Swift fills stadiums now when she tours. But ... she started out for awhile performing in small-town coffee shops to a dozen or so distracted patrons at a time.

Yeah, Dwayne Johnson makes millions of dollars annually now with movies and such. But ... he started out with just $7 to his name. 

Yeah, Moses (yes, the one from the Bible) became the chosen one to lead the people of God out of slavery. But ... he had decades of obscurity before that, tending sheep in lonely fields for his wife's dad. 

Yeah, the campus upperclass leaders certainly seem now like they know most everyone, have all the connections, and seem to walk with such swagger. But ... turn the clock back a year (or more). They started out as wide-eyed, overwhelmed, trying-to-play-it-cool freshmen who were freaking out more than a bit on the inside.

We all must start out in new directions from time to time. And the starting usually seems a bit too much to handle, slow, lonely. The celebration of being a high school senior flips to the lonely grunt life of finding our way (yet again) from the bottom of the heap. It exhilarates us. It bores us. It makes us feel like imposters. It inspires us ... sometimes all this happens in the same day. 

This could be your "grind it out" time, when your big, big dreams pair with playing small coffee shops, barely any money to your name, taking lonely, obscure steps toward a future you can't yet make out in your mind's eye.

It's how it tends to go when striking out on new paths. The new paths humble us for a while before we grow wiser to the pace. All veterans start as rookies. Your imagination and your understanding doesn't stand as the limit of what's possible. 

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not upon your own understanding" -Proverbs 3:5