Uncashed

You are carrying a stack of blank checks and no money.

That is what potential is. Every idea you never started. Every talent you have been meaning to use. Every plan that is going to be incredible once conditions improve. A thick stack, and you can feel the weight of it, and it feels like wealth.

Check your pocket. Zero.

Uncashed does not mean partial. It does not round up. The man holding fifty blank checks and the man holding none have identical bank balances.

Meanwhile the guy next to you cashed one. Small amount. Barely worth writing. He has more than you.

Why aren’t you cashing them?

Because holding costs you nothing. That is the whole trap. No risk, no bill, no verdict — nothing ever forces your hand. And the zero in your pocket is at least a number you can count on. Cash the check and you trade a certain nothing for an uncertain something, and most men will not make that trade.

Then there is the other reason. A blank check can be any number you want. Ten dollars, ten million — as long as it stays blank, it stays perfect. Walk it to the window and it becomes a real figure, in ink, and now you know exactly what you were worth. Most men would rather carry the fantasy than learn the number.

So they hold.

But checks expire. There is a date on yours you cannot read. The window closes, the body slows, the years get counted. You are not holding an asset. You are holding something depreciating to nothing on a schedule you do not control.

Cash one. Today. Whatever it comes back as.

A small real number beats an imaginary fortune every time.

"Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do." — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe