This Fleetwood Mac song has been playing in my brain for weeks now. Realizing that the very people I expected to be at the end of the road with me may be going their own way is painful but it's a truth.
Being as loyal a friend as they come I tend to get hurt a decent amount. If I let you in then you are in for life. You are backed for life, supported for life, fed for life, loved for life, and encouraged to be the best person you can be. Someone told me today I have got to lower my standards and expectations. As true as that may be it will never make sense in my world. I would rather sit in this pain than to expect less than greatness from those around me. When I love I love fiercely and that opens me up for some suffering but lowering my standards isn't something I am willing to do. I expect greatness and if you choose to go your own way I have to let that happen but I will never stop expecting greatness from you.
As Pauline and I continue on our journey with the new warehouse we are met with persecution in business as well and we have yet to lower our standards. People don't like our logo, they want us to invest in this equipment, those chairs, these centerpieces, etc. They have opinions on our marketing, our decisions, and our structure. But we gotta stick to what we know. Do we give too freely to our community? Yes. Do we say yes more when we should be saying no? Yup. Do we spread ourselves thin? Hold one another accountable? Wonder how we are going to make our dreams a reality? Yes, yes, yes. The one thing we don't do - lower our standards. We know who we are, where we are going, and although the how is always in question we never lose our faith. We hold tightly to one another because we realize the more and more we grow the less people are willing to meet our standards. The more people disappoint us, the tighter we hold onto our dreams and each other. Why is Abacus different? Abacus will succeed because YOU are valued. We cannot succeed without you and you are necessary to us reaching our goals. We will back you, love you, support you, feed you, and encourage you all while creating the event of your dreams. You can go your own way, but we look forward to those who go our way - we want you all with us when the road ends and we see that our standards mattered. That the tears and the pain made our dreams possible. That weeding out the darkness is necessary for the sun to shine.
