First of all, I want to thank you for all the kind notes I received after my last issue. Yes, I’m OK, just a small bonk on the head, but nothing I don’t do to myself on a daily basis. Now, are my heart and sanity currently being held together by a newfound Lego obsession? 

 

Maybe. Shut up. Legos are cool.

 

Anyway, I refuse to let this year end on such a fraught note. 

 

So, let’s get into it.

 

For a meaningful number of you reading this, you're like me. We grew up in a world where The Godfather (and its critically acclaimed successor) had already cemented its gilded, permanent position in our collective cultural consciousness.

 

Given that I cling to my love of this movie like an exhausting personality trait (it’s my version of Crossfit, I guess?), I'm not about to launch into a diatribe against its greatness. It’s brilliant. But the legacy of this movie is so strong that we seem to consider its success inevitable in retrospect. 

 

In reality, this movie should not have gotten made. 

And when you know the story of how it came together, it seems impossible:

 

My point is the movie wasn't thought of as a masterpiece from its inception, every decision considered a stroke of genius. Quite the contrary, The Godfather succeeded in spite of its detractors and those who sought to derail Coppola's vision, only earning its unimpeachable status as a masterpiece after the fact. 

 

We tell ourselves stories about inevitability because they’re comforting. 

 

We like believing great things arrive fully formed, guided by genius, protected by foresight. It makes success feel orderly and failure feel deserved. But that’s not how any of this actually works. When you zoom out, what you see isn’t inevitability. 

 

You see persistence inside disorder. 

 

You see people staying in rooms they’re unwelcome in, defending ideas no one else can yet picture, absorbing interference long enough for something to come together.

 

What’s striking, looking back, isn’t just how many times The Godfather almost fell apart. It’s how close it came to not existing at all because someone flinched. Any one of those moments could have ended it: a director walking away, a studio pulling the plug, a casting decision reversed, a compromise made for comfort instead of conviction. 

 

The movie didn’t survive because the risk disappeared. 

 

It survived because, at a few critical points, someone didn’t look back to confirm they were safe.

 

The tragic myth of Orpheus captures this perfectly.

Orpheus, a musician, loses Eurydice, the woman he loves, and refuses to accept it. 

 

He goes somewhere no one is supposed to go: the underworld. He plays his music, and it’s so moving that the gods make him an offer. He can lead her back to the living world. The only rule is this: he must walk ahead of her the entire way and not turn around. If he looks back, he loses her forever.

 

He makes it almost all the way. He’s crossed the underworld. He’s at the threshold between death and life. And right there, fear kicks in. What if she isn’t really behind him? What if the deal falls apart at the last second? 

 

He turns around to check. And that’s the moment everything is lost. 

 

 

When you’re in the middle of it, impossibility doesn’t announce itself as a clean no. It looks like mixed signals, bad incentives, people who don’t get it, people who actively want you gone, and moments where walking away would be easier and more socially acceptable. 

 

From the inside, nothing about that feels destined. It just feels unstable. 

 

This is where fear gets loud. 

 

Fear starts inventing consequences, demanding proof, asking you to look back and check whether what you’re carrying is real. And that’s usually where momentum breaks, because attention wandered right before the threshold.

 

Which is why the real question isn’t "is this possible?" The real question is how you decide something is worth staying with long enough to become possible at all.

 

That decision doesn’t come from confidence. It doesn’t come from optimism. And it definitely doesn’t come from pretending the risk isn’t real. 

 

It comes from discernment. 

 

 

From being able to tell when discomfort is part of the cost, and when it’s the friction that means you’re moving in the right direction.

 

Over time, I’ve learned there are a few questions that help clarify whether it’s worth taking a leap of faith. If you’re standing at a threshold right now, these are the questions I’d ask before deciding whether to keep walking forward.

 

When you stop filling every gap with people, noise, and errands, what shows up? In the quiet, does the want get louder, clearer, harder to ignore? Distraction can make anything feel “fine.” Solitude has a way of telling the truth. If your desire only becomes more persistent, more forceful in the calm, you need to pay attention.
 

Does moving toward it stretch you in ways that feel honest, even when fear is narrating every possible downside? Or are you slowly editing yourself down, because fear has made shrinking sound reasonable and responsible? Growth often feels awkward, exposed, and unsettling. Be mindful of when fear tries to start negotiating terms on your behalf. Speaking of fear… 
 

Does the fear exist because the thing actually matters, because it would change your life if it worked? Or does the fear completely eclipse the want, leaving you frozen, bargaining, or looking for permission to quit? Big desires come with fear. That’s normal. But when fear gets louder than the pull, call it what it is: avoidance trying to stay in charge.
 

If you walk away now, will that sit quietly with you over time? Or will the unanswered what if keep resurfacing, asking why you didn’t stay when it still mattered? Sometimes the cost isn’t failing. It’s knowing you opted out while the door was still open.
 

So here we are. End of the year. 

 

Standing in front of something that feels unreasonable to want and irresponsible to trust. This is the part of the story people rewrite later, after it works, when they pretend it was always obvious. It never is.

 

You can be Orpheus, almost all the way out, turning around at the last second to confirm you’re safe. You can be Francis Ford Coppola, fighting for a vision no one else can see, making something extraordinary and then (because life is life) eventually lighting most of the money on fire anyway.  

Or you can be Lieutenant Dan from Forrest Gump: furious, broken, yelling into a storm with no lesson yet, no arc, no meaning… just staying in it long enough that something impossible happens, and he ends up alive, grounded, and walking again on legs "made of the same stuff they used on the space shuttle."

 

Right now, there is something in front of you. 

 

Not a metaphor. A real thing. 

 

A year you haven’t lived yet. A new opportunity that terrifies you. A love calling to you that you haven’t answered. An idea you keep circling. You are closer than you think. And this is the moment most people stall, right at the threshold, when the only thing left to risk is themselves.

 

So before you check. Before you flinch. Before you talk yourself out of it. Stop.

 

Look at what’s in front of you and ask yourself one last time: 

 

 

Whatever you decide, decide it awake, not because you flinched.