Is the Juice Worth the Squeeze?

When I was sixteen, I dropped out of high school. For an entire year. And I figured that would be the end of my story, but I was lucky enough to get a second chance at a place called Alternative High School. Back when I attended over a decade ago, it was a place for pregnant teenaged moms, for recovering teenaged drug users, and, I guess myself—a hopeless teenaged halfbreed—all of whom still wanted to get a high school diploma.

The building itself was a ramshackle misfit, an L-shaped brick facility which had clearly been repurposed from its original role as an elementary school, retrofitted for us. Crouched unceremoniously alongside the wide suburban arterial of Crowchild Trail. Grey-speckled industrial tile flooring, black leather couches in the hallways, a designated smoking pit by the parking lot, and teachers known by their first names.

In a way, I redeemed myself. I completed grade 12 and 13, and successfully got my high school diploma at nineteen years old. And, a decade later, graduated with a bachelor's degree—the first in my family to do so.

Anyways, I bring all this up because, during my final year at that school, I stumbled upon a large black-and-white poster, shimmering from being laminated. It had an unsourced quote that changed the trajectory of my entire life.

This is the beginning of a new day. I have been given this day to use as I will. I can waste it. . . or use it for good, but what I do today is important, because I am exchanging a day of my life for it! When tomorrow comes, this day will be gone forever, leaving in its place something that I have traded for it. I want it to be gain and not loss; good and not evil; success, and not failure; in order that I shall not regret the price that I have paid for it. I will try just for today, for you never fail until you stop trying.

Sit with that for a minute. I'm baptized and born anew each time I read this. Wake up! I want you, reader, to wake up right now, feel the air in and out of your lungs, your eyelids blinking (are they heavy?), throat swallowing (is it dry?). Fucking feel yourself, the sensation of your fingertips inward to the palm of your hands. What do your palms feel like?

Stay with me, keep up the intention and deliberate pace. Work with what you have and try to answer another question I have:

Is the juice worth the squeeze?

I don't know who you are, or what your life looks like, but I do know that people do not give enough thought into what they're doing right now. At this very second. And this second. And this second next. We put off the important-but-not-urgent, and stay inside the safety of the known.

We need risk. The world is starved of people taking risks for the sake of others. The innumerable wolves waiting at our doors are not polite beasts. We only c