David McElroy

I know a woman who’s exhausted with her life. She’s unhappy. She’s sort of numb. She told me tonight that everything in her life went downhill after she had two children with the wrong man.

I jokingly asked this 42-year-old why she would choose the wrong man to get stuck with, but she took it as a serious question.

“He seemed good enough at the time,” she said. “I didn’t expect much and I thought maybe he would get better. I never really loved him, but I thought he was better than nothing at all. That was stupid. He was a terrible husband and a complete dud as a father.”

I felt sorry for her, but there was also a smug little part of me which thought, “I’d never allow myself to get stuck with someone I didn’t love.”

And then I remembered something. I almost did the same thing.

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I was very confident, but I was also nervous. It was hard to say which feeling was stronger.

I was sitting in an auditorium on a late Saturday morning about 16 years ago. The auditorium was full. Maybe 600 people? 800? I don’t recall. We were waiting for a block of short films to start showing at the Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival in Birmingham. Most people were there to watch films. I was there to finally find out whether an audience liked my own first film.

My companion that morning was a girlfriend with whom I had a complicated relationship. Things didn’t end well for us, but I’ll always be grateful for her support that day.

I was nervous by the time the lights dimmed for the first short to start. My film was about the fourth in line, so I sat through several others first. I had never been to a film festival before, so I had just assumed the films would be good. I couldn’t tell anybody — because it would have sounded prideful — but I thought the other films were mostly terrible.

My film finally started. I held my breath. Would they laugh? We got to the first punchline. The audience roared with laughter. I was so happy that I wanted to cry.

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Do you want to stop me from trying something new? Just make me face the reality that my first attempt won’t be perfect.

Do you want to stop me from getting better at something new I’ve tried? Just show me how much better everybody else’s work is. Show me the best example of that work from someone else and then wait while a voice whispers, “See? You’re not good enough.”

I’m a quitter. The twin demons named Fear and Shame stand guard over my dreams. They taunt me. As long as I stick to things I find easy, they leave me alone. But when I look at my dreams again — or if I dare to start working toward one of those dreams — they spring into action.

“You’re not good enough,” Shame hisses. “Look how good all these other people are. They’ll laugh at your incompetence.”

“You’re going to do all this work and find out you have no talent,” Fear whispers. “You’re better off doing what you already know how to do. It might not make any money, but you’re good at it — so you won’t be embarrassed.”

I listen to these demons — and then I quietly find a thousand reasons not to do the things I want to do. It happened again this week.

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