25 Lies Twentysomethings Need to Stop Believing by Paul Angone

Author:Paul Angone
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Young Adult;Young adults—Life skills guides;Common fallacies;REL012070;REL012120;YAN048040
ISBN: 9781493428793
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2021-01-21T00:00:00+00:00

It’s not about what you’re doing, it’s about who you’re becoming. Inside yourself and amongst yourself.

—Frederick Buechner

In 2019, four years after All Groan Up released, I received an email through the State of Tennessee Penitentiary System. It appeared I had a message from a prisoner there. I thought it was a joke or spam. I wasn’t sure if I should accept the message or not, but for whatever reason, it felt like the real deal. So I accepted it. I was nearly brought to tears by what I read, and we started a back-and-forth correspondence.

The prisoner told me her story. How long she’d been in prison and what for. She told me she had been struggling, but then in prison she found and read my book All Groan Up. It had given her hope. She started believing she had a future. I was shocked and humbled. A reminder to me that I’m just playing one instrument and God is conducting the whole orchestra.

I was so encouraged by this dialogue, about the hope that sprung out of my failure, that I grieved. But then I realized something. It was probably only because the book was a failure in sales, not in spite of it, that All Groan Up found its way to the Tennessee State Penitentiary. It was probably a donation to the prison from the publisher because they still had so many copies left over! If All Groan Up was a success by sales number standards, it probably would have never made it to that prison cell to bring hope to that person. The failure of the book was its pathway into one of the hardest places in the world to enter.

What you see as a failure now might save someone’s life later.

You never know who you are encouraging and breathing life into, no matter how it feels or looks to you right now. Your kids who you don’t think are listening. Your friend who feels distant. Your coworker who feels like they’re slipping away. You might never know the impact you’re really having, but that doesn’t mean it’s not happening.

As I first asked in 101 Questions You Need to Ask in Your Twenties, “Who will you not be able to help if you give up now?”

While we will never fully know the answer to this question from where we sit right now, I think this is an important question to keep at the core of any dream. Because someone is going to need you and your dream. Someone is going to need your resolution as you slogged through failed outcomes. Someone is going to need your perseverance. Because as they lose hope, you will provide a lifeline from having been there and done that.

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