I think one of the toughest things about life is the constant need to make a choice out of a limited set of often conflicting choices. Of course you don’t get to know in advance if the choice you make is the right one. Divine order left that to the retrospective side of things, where you get to look back and either go, Phewx, I made the right call, or Darn it, I could have made a better call.

Eliud Kipchoge famously said that No Human Being is Limited. That’s very inspiring coming from a multiple record breaking Athlete. He spoke these immortal words on his second attempt at a sub 2 hour Marathon running time, which he was able to achieve under circumstances that could not be recognised officially by the World Athletics body. With all due respect to this legend, a more accurate statement, though less memorable, would have been, with Pace makers, constant hydration, and no open competitors, No Human Being is Limited.

Time and maturity has definitely made me more cycnical, or realistic if you want to be nice. I hadn’t fully grasped how practical I had become until one day, on a long drive, my younger brother asked me, “Alex, when did you stop dreaming?”. It brought a tear to my eye. The reason for this was, I couldn’t remember when I stopped dreaming.

I had been so focussed on keeping my Kids in school, making mortgage payments, trusting God for higher income, keeping my Marriage happy, watching my lower tummy etc, all these very real and very boring mid-life choices, that the idea of dreaming had faded further and further back into the recesses of my mind.

What were my aspirations? What excited me? What kept me up late at night? What got me out of bed in the morning? I had been so busy existing, I forgot what it felt like to go after things.

After a wild life as a dream chaser in my 20’s and early 30’s, I seemed to have settled into a predictable life as a stability chaser in my mid 30’s. I remember making a decision to leave a well paying second job at a leading Ad Agency, to go join a friend’s Startup as a Co-founder. As I made this major financial decision, I was newly married with a child, and my rent had just doubled due to a recent house move. Nothing was out of my reach. My nearly 40 self looks back at that 26 year old and thinks, WTH Alex!

But you see, nothing was permanent to me back then. While that Startup got into financial trouble under 2 years later, I got head hunted for my first Corporate job, and off I went! When that overpriced apartment became a maintenance nightmare later on, we packed our bags and moved on. Nothing, and I mean nothing, was out of my reach, and nothing could hold me down.

The first time I climbed a Mountain, I did so in jeans and sneakers, and no rain gear. On our way up, we met with this old Man who looked at us incredulously and asked, ‘Are you sure you want to climb this Mountain with the coming rain?’. We gave him a resounding Yes!, and on we went. How I didn’t get Pneumonia on that climb, with all the wetness, and freezing cold of the Aberdare Ranges i’ll never know. I made it back, and barely 6 months later I would make a futile attempt to summit Mt. Kenya. What couldn’t I do?

This was many years before Eliud’s feat, but I was living his Mantra with no safety helmet on! I jumped off cliffs, bungee jumped, road raced, drunk myself senseless in foreign countries, crossed borders illegally, and a raft of other adventures that combined would give my Mother nightmares.

Here’s the thing about life though. Every choice you make, leaves other choices on the table. You only get to know if the choice you made is the right one, after the fact. This is a fact of life. You cannot escape it, you cannot trick your way out of it.

My brother’s question got me reflecting. There’s two ways to go about life; by Fear or by Faith. The former can stifle you, make you small, leave you with regrets when this race is over. The latter opens up worlds you wouldn’t have dreamt of. Being a born again Christian allows me the license to dream, knowing who is in my corner, watching over me, ordering my steps.

For a moment there, I had forgotten this important point: By themselves, Human Beings Are Limited, but With God, nothing is impossible. If you know your Bible, you know who said this.