I remember a rhyme painted on a pottery pitcher in my parents’ kitchen. “Little duties still put off will end in never done. By and by is soon enough has ruined many a one.”  Beyond the judgment on procrastination this potentially guilt-trolling little ditty may offer another insight.

Without knowing it a friend challenged me recently. She went looking for my latest blog and found that it was six months old! Fortunately, it offered a boon to her spirit, a fact she shared with others and me.

Reflecting on the hiatus in my writing led me to realize that I sometimes balk on the brim of forward movement. Does that happen to you too? Do you also find an excuse to postpone taking what you know are the first steps down the path to a fuller expression of your heart’s truths? I know from coaching that there are many who block themselves at the brink.

What if the “little duties still put off” were owed to self and led the way to the potential that beckons from the other side? What if, as David Whyte says, the step is simpler than we had thought? My step today is to begin writing once again. What is yours?

It is always hard to believe that the courageous step is so close to us, that it is closer than we ever could imagine, that in fact, we already know what it is, and that the step is simpler, more radical than we had thought: which is why we so often prefer the story to be more elaborate, our identities clouded by fear, the horizon safely in the distance, the essay longer than it needs to be and the answer safely in the realm of impossibility.

From “Beginning” in Consolations