500 Words a Week - Go Track Mud on Someone’s Carpet.

“Go track mud on someone’s carpet.”

A line from a letter Johnny Cash once wrote to Bob Dylan.

A phrase Cash used to encourage Dylan to make his own artistic choices. To push the boundaries, to follow his instincts and values rather than conforming to the expectations of those blindly following the rules laid down before them.

It’s the kind of line that, when you hear it, snaps you out of hesitation, bringing forth a certain boldness to stop waiting for permission and start following your intuition.

There’s a time for patience. For abiding by the rules. For waiting your turn. For taking your shoes off before entering the room.

And then there’s a time to rip the stabilizers off and see if you can stay upright. To charge the gates of hell with nothing but a water gun (analogy from Dave Ramsey).

A lesson in life is learning when to lean into each of these sides of the coin. You need a mix of both to get anywhere worth going.

If you remain patient, forever waiting, you risk becoming docile. Your joints stiffen, your courage dulls, and before long, you get comfortable being still. Comfortable deferring. When opportunity finally shows its face, you’ve sedated yourself too long to act. Paralysis disguised as patience.

But if you go through life with all fever and burning desire, it begins to eat itself. The fire that once lit your way starts consuming the very fuel that sustained it. Eventually, there's nothing left but smoke and dust. This is often the story of the person who barrels forward relentlessly, relationships fray, connection slips away, and they find themselves staring into the mirror wondering where all that energy went. Passion replaced by fatigue. Drive replaced by emptiness.

Life, in its complexity, asks us to live inside this paradox.

It asks us to know when to be patient, and when to move fast. When to sit quietly and when to stand up and make noise. It asks us to carry these two opposing truths at once, that sometimes we wait, and sometimes we act and wisdom lies in the knowing the difference.

When you look at your life right now, where do you need to show a little more patience?

Where do you need to bring more fire?

The thought that comes to mind is from Tim Ferriss:

“Life punishes the vague request, and rewards the specific ask.”

For me, I need to be more forward in stating what I want. More specific in asking for it. While being patient in waiting for the response. Patient in the face of rejection. Patient with the process, while remaining aggressively consistent in the action.

Go track mud on someone’s carpet.

But know when it might be time to take your shoes off.