Surely

The following quote was in Danny's fortune cookie: "You cannot discover new oceans unless you are willing to lose sight of the shore."

That tiny scrap of paper made its way onto our refrigerator and so I read it with great frequency and I think about its implications in my life. Here I will substitute "shore" with its homonym "sure" because I am sure they mean one and the same thing.

How many times have I given up on a sure thing and what has been the result? It would make me dizzy to calculate all the times I've just jumped without looking. All the times I just quit. All the times I infuriated my dad because I should have seen it through until the end and fulfilled my obligation. You see, I don't have much allegiance to things that bother me. Unless my withdrawal will hurt someone, it doesn't take much for me to walk on out.

I've walked out on multiple jobs - once because this girl was a stupid bitch and I wanted to prove a point, another time was two weeks ago, when I didn't return from lunch...ever. I just can't stand wasting my time with stupid ideas or mean people even if it brings me financial security.

I've walked out of many budding and some bloomed relationships because the security I felt made me feel sick, not safe. I couldn't live on the beach with Nice Guy because what lay beyond my field of view had a stronger magnetic force than the sand upon which I stood.

I left the first college I attended and dropped courses at other schools on a whim. Since graduation I've pretended not the notice education positions in the New York Times. All along I've let friendships die, too.

For none of this do I feel any guilt or remorse. I abandoned the shore a million times so that I could finally become sure and trusting of myself.