The risks

After talking myself into believing I was getting a "sign" from the universe, I decided I simply had to get to making a youtube video for the site -- oh it was going to be so cute and funny, talking to people about the New Age. So I drove up to Flagstaff and Sedona where all the liberals and New Agers are -- and struck out terrible. The two owners of the New Age stores in Flagstaff refused me, and the wind died in my sails right then and there.

I have been stuck since on how to approach people, WHETHER to approach people to invite them to contribute to my little endeavor. I am "live and let live" to a fault, terrible sales person, no hardcharging promoter, so what do I think I'm doing? My next step was to try to contact different authors and invite them to add their two cents, but it is hard, hard, to bring myself to it. Then tonight I run across this in Peter Block's book on Community (oh what a book, profound book, beautiful book), a little section called: The Risk of Invitation.

"The anxiety of the invitation is that they might not show up. I do not want to face the reality of their absence, caution, reservations, passivity, or indifference. I do not want to have to face the prospect that I or a few of us may be alone in the future we want to pursue."

"And I do not want to face the same truth about myself, for my fear that they will not come is the caution I feel myself about showing up, even for the possibility that I am committed to. My fear is that what I long for is not possible, that what I invite them to is not realistic, that the world I seek cannot exist. And so I imagine myself as a misplaced person, an exile. It is today's version of an old story that I am wrong and I will soon be found out. The fear that no one will show up is a projection of my own doubt, my loss of faith."

It is equal parts unnerving and comforting to see one's fears and anxieties laid bare by a stranger. Now what to do with this diagnosis? The few invitations I've offered thus far regarding this project have indeed resulted in no one showing up. I keep wanting to make this a sign from the universe as well, to let myself off the hook, and go back to life as normal.

But I can't, I can't, I believe the words I have written. I have to go forward. But at least I have the understanding of Peter Block of Cincinnati Ohio.