headlong

The Marvell quote below is one of the first I ever memorized. I was just turning 14, and that seemed immeasurably old, because I'd spent so many years wishing I could be older and not just a kid. I remember thinking, wow, fourteen - nobody could possibly get any older than this. A year or two later, a friend of mine was killed in a rock climbing accident in Yosemite. I became intensely aware that I might not have that much time left - that someday, maybe someday soon, I would die too.

I still feel that urgency. Life is too short. Rushing headlong into something, approaching with abandon, breaking through the fear and doubt to plunge ahead... it can lead to mistakes or bad choices, but you can't always know that ahead of time. Sometimes it is an absolute necessity.