麻豆社

From Sarah Joseph, Editor of a Muslim lifestyle magazine:

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7 pm this evening is the deadline for budding young story writers to get in their 500 words. Be brave kids!
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Indeed, my experience of children is that they often are brave about embracing new challenges, about being creative, about breaking out of boxes. 听It鈥檚 us adults who tend to be more cautious.
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Maybe a fear of failure, a lack of confidence, a few too many knock backs. Life can teach us not to try. Or that it鈥檚 too late.
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But seriously, we get one shot at life鈥� this is not a rehearsal.
So why not live our dreams, take a few risks, fail a little, try again?
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I鈥檓 not suggesting for one minute that trying new things is easy. We write plans and they go off in a million different ways, and they go wrong in a million others. But I reckon if we keep working at things, keep chipping away鈥� things get done鈥� things change.
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I truly believe that we each have our gift.听 Sometimes we don鈥檛 get to discover them, often because we鈥檙e too scared to discover them. Scared of making a mess up, scared of not being good enough, scared of any negative blowback because that takes energy, and we often don鈥檛 have enough of that!
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But don鈥檛 we owe it to ourselves to try?
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Sometimes I put things off, waiting 鈥渇or the right time鈥�; believing that there is always enough time鈥� Which is why deadlines can be really helpful. I often need them to complete a task. Sometimes though, there鈥檚 no pressure to be brave, to be bold, to chase our dreams. And so we get stuck with how things are rather than risking how we want them to be.
But taking our life鈥檚 clock for granted is a risky strategy. The Prophet reminded again and again to utilise the benefits of our time before they are lost to us. We don鈥檛 know our personal deadline, which is why it鈥檚 so important to make the most of what we have; living not just existing, contributing not just consuming, striving for a life well lived.
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Oh, and remember those 500 words. Get those stories in!