You think you'll fail? Try anyway.

The Boston Herald

BEVERLY BECKHAM

I used to play this game all the time. I used to excel at it: I can't do this because I don’t have that. For example I used to tell myself, I can’t write because I don't have a typewriter. That was my reasoning when I was 14.

And so I bought a second-hand typewriter. It cost $25. I earned 50 cents an hour babysitting and spent a lot of time changing diapers and reading bedtime stories to get that typewriter, which I believed would turn me into a writer. But when I got the typewriter I still couldn't write. Not without a desk. I absolutely had to have a desk. I couldn't write at the kitchen table. That's not what real writers did.

So then it was the desk I needed.

When the desk arrived, I found I needed the right paper. Not erasable bond. That was too flimsy. I needed paper from a place in Quincy. Only this particular paper would do. I waited a week for it to arrive.

Then it was the right music, the right light, the right feeling, the right mood. There was always something that stood in my way. I created these roadblocks, intentionally or unintentionally, not because I didn't want to write, but because I was afraid to begin. I was afraid that even with the typewriter, the desk, the paper, the mood, the music and light, I still wouldn't be able to do what I ached to do. I was afraid I'd try and fail.

This fear kept me from sitting down and trying for years.

Now I still play this game but it isn't so much a fear of failure that keeps me at it but a reluctance to admit that I don't want to do something I should be doing.

You really should run, all my friends who run tell me. Running makes you feel so much better. Running is good for the thighs. (They know how to hurt a person.) If you tried it you'd love it.

If I had running shoes I'd run, I tell myself. I get running shoes and then it's the shorts I need. Then it's the time I can't find. Or if I have the time, it's the weather that stops me. It's too hot or too wet or too cold or too something. I don't want to run but instead of saying so, I invent excuses.

If I had lettuce, I would eat salad instead of cookies.

If I had gardening gloves, I'd weed every day.

If I had a heated pool, I'd swim all the time.

If I weren't so busy, I'd cook and vacuum, keep up with the washing and ironing and learn Russian and French.

Sure I would.

I heard my words coming out of my mother-in-law's mouth the other day. She phoned and I was answering mail and started complaining about my horrible handwriting. "I have trouble reading my own words. I don't know if anyone else will be able to decipher them," I said.

"That's why I don't write letters," my mother-in-law told me. "My handwriting is too bad. If I had better penmanship, I'd write all the time."

No she wouldn't. She hates writing. She calls instead. My mother-in-law loves the phone. She loves the sound of a voice on the other end. Mail doesn't excite her.

I laughed at her excuse. And I laughed at myself, too, because, really, aren't we all like this?

I would walk every day if I lived by the ocean; if I had a place in the mountains; if there weren't so much traffic; if I didn't live on a hill; if I had someone to walk with.

I would go back to school if I weren't so busy; if it weren't so far; if the course were offered on Mondays and Wednesdays instead of Tuesdays and Thursdays.

I would take piano lessons; write a novel; learn to scuba dive; volunteer at a hospital; study art; take up tap dancing.

The truth is we don't do things for two reasons: Either we don't want to do them. They don't interest us at all. Or we want to do them badly, but we're terrified we might try and fail.

It's OK not to do something because you don't want to do it. Not everyone was born to dance or scuba dive. But it's not OK to avoid doing something you yearn to do because you're afraid to try.

Ask yourself: What's the worst that can happen? You might find out you don't like what you thought you'd like? At least you'd know.

You might even discover you're not very good at what you like. But practice and you'll get better. And you'll feel better, too, because worse than coming up short, worse than not being the best, is spending a lifetime not doing whatever is you love