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If You Haven’t Tried, You Haven’t Lived
You have to try. Because if you haven’t tried, you haven’t lived.
— William Parrish
Anthony Hopkin’s character from Meet Joe Black monologues what love is and how to fall in crazy love with someone: in this quote, he is referring to love, urging his daughter to try taking a risk with love. Not ordinary love but deep, maddening, obsessive, passionate love. Clearly, he was insinuating her current lover was not up to par when it came to romance, so he was encouraging her to at least try to find someone who made the journey of a relationship worth it in the end. And that she did.
When I heard this quote, I thought how true this was for every walk of life — not just love. If you have not tried what you are most apprehensive of, you have not lived a life worth living. Because at the end of the day, what are you living for anyway, if not to follow your deepest, most desirous passions? Sometimes it is fucking scary, looking over the cliff, beyond the unknown. But when we make that leap of faith we thought maybe our bodies could not handle physically, let alone mentally, we look behind us at the space between cliffs and realize how far we have come just from trying. And how rewarding a feeling is that? Sure, we may fall sometimes, into some water below these cliffs. Maybe even into the muckiest of…
