I was watching a photography lighting demonstration when the instructor said something that caught my fancy. He said, “Sometimes you have to go too far to know you’ve gone far enough.”

His photographic message sunk in right away, but I sensed there was a broader application to his remark.

I’m not a fan of the phrase, “pushing the envelope” because it has been so overused, but its practice does help us to discover when we’re in the uncomfortable zone between far enough and too far.

If we make going too far a habit, we will pay a heavy price, but if we never go too far, we may never know the joy of going far enough. We will play it safe. Granted, we will have fewer ups and downs in our life, but that ultimately translates to less life – A life of quiet desperation.

Richness of life requires risk – the risk of going too far.

My experience with people who won’t even go near the borderline is that they fear more of what people will say about them than they fear the feeling of going too far. What others think of them prevents them from living life more fully.

Here’s a secret that you may not have come in contact with yet: People are going to think what they think about you no matter what you do. They make that determination early on in your relationship and it rarely changes. Take parents for example; they often think the same things of their grown children that they thought of them when they were little. It reminds me of the great line from the movie, SABRINA featuring a character named Linus who was played by Harrison Ford. This question was asked of a man who knew Linus as a youngster: “What was Linus like as a boy?” His answer was, “Younger.”

When figuring out life’s recipe, sometimes you have to add too much salt. The experience will get you past bland and you will know, more than theoretically, the perfect amount.

Living our life in our head is theatre; getting offstage and into the audience once in awhile may take us too far, but it does let us know we’re living a false, sheltered existence that contains far too much drama and not enough real life.

You have to go over the edge to know the edge. Again, in life, if you do this all the time, you’ll suffer severe cuts; if you never do it, you’ll never cut it.

All the best,

John

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