The Little Idea That Wouldn’t Leave Me Alone

It started as a small thought.

Not a big, life-changing, lightning-bolt kind of thought.

Just a little idea that would quietly show up now and then.

You know what you could do?

I barely listened.

I had plenty of reasons not to.

“That’s silly.”

“Someone else is already doing that.”

“I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

“I’m too old to start something new.”

And, of course:

“Who would even care?”

So I did what I had done with plenty of ideas before.

I pushed it aside.

But that little idea kept coming back.

It would show up while I was driving or doing something completely ordinary. Sometimes it would pop into my mind when I was trying to fall asleep.

It wasn’t loud.

It didn’t demand my attention.

It just kept quietly reminding me:

I’m still here.

Then one day, it occurred to me that I had been asking an awful lot of that little idea.

Before I had even given it a moment of attention, I wanted it to answer every question.

Where will this go?

Will it work?

Will anyone like it?

What if I embarrass myself?

What if I spend time on it and nothing comes of it?

Honestly, that’s a lot of pressure to put on something that had barely introduced itself.

So I decided to leave it alone.

Not ignore it.

Just stop interrogating it.

I let myself think about it without immediately needing an answer.

And somewhere along the way, I realized something that surprised me.

Maybe not every idea arrives with a complete set of instructions.

Maybe some ideas are more like an unopened door.

You don’t have to know everything that’s on the other side before you reach for the handle.

You just have to be willing to open it.

So maybe there’s an idea that has been following you around.

Maybe you’ve dismissed it more times than you can count.

Maybe you’ve told yourself you’re too old, too busy, too inexperienced, or too late.

Maybe you’ve convinced yourself that someone else could do it better.

But perhaps you don’t have to decide today whether that idea will become something big.

You don’t have to know where it will lead.

You don’t have to have a plan for every step along the way.

Maybe you can simply stop telling it no before you’ve even heard what it has to say.

Because sometimes an idea isn’t asking you to have all the answers.

Sometimes it’s simply asking you to open the door.

And see what’s waiting on the other side.

Maybe that little idea that won’t leave you alone isn’t there to disrupt your life.

Maybe it’s there to invite you into something you haven’t discovered yet.