Fall Down and Count to Twenty

I don’t believe anyone builds a tree fort for them selves alone. You build tree forts to share. Tree forts are a hide out, a sanctuary for secrets and adventure, and for imagination. In childhood play exists between two, sometimes sidekicks, accomplices, or even partners in crime. Heroes are bigger when they are framed by a supporter, someone who completely trusts and believes totally in the hero. You must find the “other” who can play tag with you, someone to exchange the roll of “It” a precious once in a life time friend. This is the first form of collaboration, childhood moments when the rules of a game are hammered out in an armistice, which was never taught but instead invented. Children can invent with such abandon and freedom, no fear of failure, because you can not fail at play. The rules of how high you must count before beginning the search of the hidden. The number that seems fair remains a constant shifting target. And then you have to start the count. The debate between one-Mississippi or one-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, three-one-thousand and then the call, the glorious battle cry, the goose-bump raising, “Ready or not here I come!”

Can there be any better declaration to the world? Ready or Not Here I come! Every day should start so bold. Every challenge should be faced with this perfect sentiment. Ready or not, doesn’t matter, because I’m coming and everything before me better watch out, because I’m hunting. And I’m not quitting until I get what I want. I will find everything hidden, I will seek out every mystery and run with complete enthusiasm into the unknown.

The rules by which we choose to play our games are specific and individual to each of us, but they remain ours. We are influenced and pressured by the world at large to change our rules and play every game by pre-established rules. But a wise magician once told me, “Never bet a man at his own game.” When someone else made the contract before you arrived you are at once inside a distinct disadvantage to the creator of the contract. What is left is for you to negotiate your understanding of their rules. But those rules will always start with you pushing up from a place of weakness. Better is to be the person who starts the game. Start your collaboration from the “start” with only the people you truly admire and want to play with. Don’t enter contracts with people you wouldn’t invite into your tree fort. Reject the world’s rules for your technique, seek out the chance to be the inventor of your own fate. Guide yourself into the right decisions by only considering options that give you outcomes you will thrive within. Find the strength to reject the choice between lesser evils. Perception is everything we know, so stop perceiving yourself stuck between two unattractive options. This world has millions of collaborators who want to play with you, find them, bond with them, kick out the influences which continue to mire you in grief and uncertainty. The cost of loosing a negotiation is too high, we just don’t have the time for you to wander about lost and confused. We are in desperate need of your best.

You don’t have to know where you are going to end-up to begin your attempt. But we need you to attempt the impossible, and that impossible needs to be executed with your particular swagger.  Be ready to shout it to the world, “Ready or not here I come!” Because when you start running down that hill into the park and your arms start swinging like a maniac on fire and you feel the momentum take over, and you know you won’t be able to stop with out falling on your face. You have to keep going until you hit a tree or fall in the creek at the bottom of the trail. But here is my hope for that fast falling run down that hill, at the bottom there is a place where the creek bends north, and over that swirling pool in the creek’s bend is an ancient cedar tree and some time ago a rope was hung from one of it’s high branches and if you get enough speed you can leap from the edge of that dirty ledge of a cliff and grab that rope in mid air and swing far out over the creek and drop into the water at the apex of the swing and you will land in the deep part of the creek. So run faster my friend, get your speed up, for if you are going to fall anyway, then both the style and quality of impact you make when you land, matters a great deal. You matter a great deal to me. Meet me underwater, we’ll break the surface together, and I will be your sidekick.