Verified by 
For years, everything and everyone seems to conspire to keep us from exploring what we really want to do. There are a thousand ways to numb ourselves to the urges that would shake things up. Family members' needs sap our energy; financial circumstances fence us in. Sitting down at the computer "just to finish up" a project from work easily turns into yet another evening or weekend lost to the job. Movies, television shows, and wandering through cyberspace can fill our non-work time, until we are enveloped by passivity. "Next year," we pledge to ourselves, only to let a few more years go by.
The shock of realizing we have gotten older often turns someday into now. We suddenly locate ourselves further on the trajectory between birth and death, and a bolder spirit overtakes us. Whether a milestone in the lives of our children, a friend's heart attack, or the death of a parent who had seemed invincible, something spurs us to recognize that our former purpose does not suffice and we cannot wait any longer to follow our heart's desire.
Many of us stifled at least some of our dreams earlier in life. In the first quadrant of adulthood, we may have succumbed to the positive verdict of success in a certain field, even though it wasn't the one we really wanted to pursue. Then, during the tumult of midlife, we may have gone on following a path that came easily to us or was simply necessary for earning a living. Our fullest enthusiasm, located in another direction entirely, may await us in later life when we are ready to explore all that has lain dormant.
In fourth grade I longed to play the cello, but I chose viola because I could hide it under my coat on the way to school. Relentless ridicule was visited upon those in orchestra, and I knew I could not bear it. Year after year, I sat in rehearsals and envied the cellists beside me as we prepared for school concerts. Finally, I abandoned viola in the miasma of entering ninth grade.
Just before my fifty-first birthday, I went out one day and bought a cello. Then I found a teacher willing to endure a stubborn adult, and now I have attained a decent vibrato and can play one of the slow movements of a Bach cello suite reasonably well. I refuse to practice; I only play for pleasure. I might work on a tough section here and there, trying to improve, but generally I ask myself only to feel the instrument against my chest and to let the resonance of the sound move through me.
Making time to play amidst all my commitments, over and over again, proclaims the sweetness of satisfying a long-held desire. I have faced down my former cowardice and given myself a lingering victory. Each time I pick up the instrument, I see a broad vista of possibilities opening before me.
