I’ve decided that I have mixed feelings toward blank pages. On the one hand, they are so full of promise and opportunity and unscathed goodness. On the other, they’re intimidating and there’s this terrible feeling of not wanting to ruin a perfectly good page.

Upon further consideration, that could apply to any number of things: friendships, years, goals…it’s so easy to tread reluctantly because you’re afraid you’ll do something wrong and mess up that metaphorical blank page.

But at the end of the day, what do you do with it? Do you sit there staring at it, gently prodding it with a pencil? I would hope not. When I have a blank page in front of me, I revel for a moment in its blankness, and then I pick up my pencil or pen or keyboard and I get started. If there is a mistake, there’s always the backspace key or the eraser. And if things get REALLY bad, it’s quite easy to take a whole new page and start over.

Perhaps we should apply that philosophy to those friendships, to those years, to those goals. The thought of failure is far too paralysing. Maybe we should just do it already.

And that magic backspace key? I’m still looking, but I think apologies and the ability to forgive yourself are both fairly good beginnings.