Life is a fickle thing. What I think is important one day seems insignificant the next. My entire perspective can change in the blink of an eye. About a month ago I was back home in PA for a wedding. While catching up with a friend, I learned that someone I went to high school with got paralyzed in a freak accident over the summer. Now he’s 24 and can’t move anything from his neck down. Last I heard, they’re hoping that he’ll eventually get some feeling back in his upper body.

I can’t help but wonder what’s next for a person after an event like that. What would I do if that happened to me? When you see tragedy strike good people close to you, you realize how much there is to be afraid of in the world. If I am lucky enough to live a full life, then I have a long stretch of time on Earth ahead of me—a time when any number of things could go wrong. But letting fear get in the way of my goals and my dreams is like giving up before I’ve begun.

The fear of failure, for example, is a very real one for me. Trying to be a professional musician is no small task. I’ve been surrounded by people who have tried and failed, who are trying in vain, or who have already given up. (I’m also thankfully surrounded by a lot of talented, successful and supportive people, too.) With each step I take, there are new things to be afraid of. What if we got signed to a label and they didn’t even release our album, effectively “shelving” it and keeping it out of the hands of potential fans? What if our next album gets released and fails, firmly entrenching us in the path of a dead-end band? Countless questions like these are enough to scare most people away from such an unsure future. But I can’t let the fear of the unknown deter me. Because if you took music away from me, I might as well be paralyzed.

I don’t know what will happen with my friend from high school. I wish him the best, and I really hope he finds what he needs to continue on with a fulfilling life. He reminds me that I can’t let anything get in my way when I never know when it will all be taken from me. And if down the road I have crashed, burned, and failed, at least I’ll be able to say that I did it without hesitating or half-assing it, and I’ll probably have piled up a lifetime’s worth of experiences along the way. Like they say at the end of Dazed and Confused, all I want to do is be able to say I did the best I could while I was stuck in this place. In this case, “this place” is Earth, life, whatever. And with so much to be unsure about, all I really know is this: there is no room for fear.