Shifting pavements, over understanding, and raising understatements.

So blatant is all the white noise that comes with finding your own path.

There's mom, and then there's dad.

There's this person, and that one.

So many words of wisdom, suggestions and questions, pieces of advice.

It all makes you think twice about how you feel, what you want, how you deal.

What's your deal, what's your thing? 

Are you a mathlete solving mad sweeps of equations or an athlete seated in the backseat of the bus doing last-minute meditation before the big game?

Are you the lover of rock singing "Take Me to the Top," or the art lover in the smock painting Mona Lisas and melted clocks?

The pressure's on as your feet push off the blank cement ground.

There are a thousand doors all lined up in a row, a million paths twisting and turning to and fro.

Which way to go?

Some lead you right into a wall.

Others get you where you wanna go with almost no problem at all.

A few, even once you finally reach the threshold, spit you out to where you first started.

Back to the top.

It's a tough road ahead, but whatever you do, do NOT stop.

Stopping turns that cement into quicksand,

and that is when you then find yourself damned at the hands and the mercy of the man.

The man, not meaning some hotshot controlling the corporate world with the push of a button,

but the man as in your own mind.

Your mind can be your greatest adversary at times. That, my friends, is why we've got to make haste.

For there is never any time to waste when you're facing life.

Time doesn't wait on anyone, so let's act like it.

It's hard not to slip and fall into the chasm of confusion as this chaotic coarse becomes more and more narrow.

It's no one way street, nowhere near straight as a bow and arrow, but just keep steady.

I know you're nervous, I know you don't feel quite ready; but I'm here to tell you that you are.

You think you're just getting started but you've already come so far.

You've built up a strength that hasn't been tapped into yet.

Believe me, bet your best bet, you can find it;

Find it, tweak it, mold it, grind it, make it your own, perfect it, never neglect it, and always respect it.

Don't ever let anyone demean it, I mean it.

Calloused hands from gripping pencils, doing chin-ups, rowing rampant, whatever your poison:

I call you all forth to do one thing, and that is to lift.

Take on a piece of whichever of those winding paths before you and uproot it from the earth.

Place it down.

Find another piece somewhere that catches your eye and place that one down in front of the previous.

Repeat however many times, rearrange however many times you need and want to.

Line 'em all up, make life work for YOU.

That's what you've got to do.

It's true, just as true as the sky is blue to me and you.

Taking on this big world is something new, for all of us.

But it's our turn.

It's our turn to make changes.

It's our turn to make an imprint on the cement while it's still fresh.

It's our turn to pick up the pieces that others have left behind for us, our time to shift pavements.