What If You Knew?

Would you start a music career if you knew you would never grow past local? Maybe sell about 100 copies, and the most to ever come to a show is 15-20 folks? All your events are holes in the wall. But your best friend, who you started with and learned instruments with, would make it to super stardom. Wildly successful. And the entirety of your career existed solely as a diving board for that dude's unimaginable success. He will be platinum. And you? A platform. And you, local. Loyal. Would you still do it? Would you have quit your job, dropped out of school, and saved your allowance for that first piece of equipment? What if you never make it but all your friends do? Would you sacrifice your home life for a business if you know that it will never quite turn the corner but the lil' dude that swept the floor is on the cover of Forbes? Would you? Would you have even written a single paragraph for a book, opened the doors of a church, opened up that storefront, applied for 501c3, endured the audit, began online school? Sacrificed sleep and marriage, knowing it will never go any further than the 10 to 15 people you started with -- 5 being your own kids. Would you have recorded one syllable -- one? Knowing the only reason you were given this gift and passion is for someone else's platform? Would Mandela have uttered one word, knowing he'd lose his wife and children to nearly thirty years of prison? And small-minded people nitpick at his flaws after his death. Was the abolishment of apartheid worth it if he saw the future? Would you have even signed up for Little League, knowing you'd remain a high school legend, knowing you wouldn't even get to D3? But your lil' brother...Hall of fame. Hmm, would you do it, if you knew greatness would never come? Just struggle. The type of struggle that forges fortunes for lumps of coal... Would you do it? Me neither. Mystery is such a strange gift. The unknown is such a wonderful veggie. It's a good thing we can't see the future. Because we would ruin it every chance we get.