We have an idea and then we sit on it. We think someone should do something, but we're afraid. We know that with a little work, a little effort, we could make it but we can't muster the will.
Emerson, the American Stoic, would say that we experience a kind of 'alienated majesty' when we come across some idea that we thought of but someone else brought into existence. But that may be too generous. What we often feel is sadness and shame: that should have been me!
Don't you think that's what Seneca felt when he saw other Stoics like Thrasea and Agrippinus standing up to Nero with such wit and courage (we tell their stories in Lives of the Stoics). That's what Cicero felt when he learned of the conspiracy against Caesar (they didn't tell him about it because they thought his loose lips would sink it). In fact, he tried after to take credit for it!
Most of us have examples of stuff like that in our own life. Perhaps we are even wrestling with something like it right now. We know what we could do. We know what we should do. We hear what we have been called to do. But then we have to actually do it. We can't sit on it. We can't talk ourselves out of it. We can't expect someone else to do it.
Because eventually they will. And they'll upstage us and shame us and leave us with nothing but regret of what could have been (and what could have been was us!).
If you hear a whisper, a voice nudging you to pursue what you've been uniquely called to do, and you want to actually do it, check out Ryan Holiday's Courage Is Calling. The first book in the Stoic Virtues series, award-winning actor Matthew McConaughey called it "an urgent call to arms for each and all of us." That call? To stop bowing to fear and start living with purpose. (Signed copies available here!)
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