doing, going, climbing, grabbing for his destiny, taking his shot. And as he lived, he made many mistakes.
Mistakes.
Errors.
The wrong answer.
But if you were afraid of making mistakes, did that hold you back from even trying?
Burr made mistakes too, just the opposite ones. Never gaining any principles. Never letting the world see who he really was.
Mistakes, just on the other side of the coin.
When she got to the house, she started lunch. They hadn’t talked about it, but she knew Greg would be back from class. He had Chem lab at four. They needed to get as much of his homework done as they could so he could study for the certification test. He only had a couple of weeks left, and he was… running out of time. She half-laughed at that.
As she cooked, she set her laptop on the table and started Hamilton. It was different listening and not watching. The raps were still impossible to understand, but the rest of it…
When Eliza took Alexander’s hand in the garden… Taylor stopped her cooking and watched for a second. She wondered if his mistake had hurt him or Eliza more. It was difficult to tell.
Mistakes. She, too, had made so many. But she hadn’t published them like Alexander had. No, every one she could she had buried, hoping no one would ever, ever know the truth about what had happened. As that thought went through her mind, Greg came in. Her first thought was he looked tired, and she knew how Eliza must have felt wanting Alexander to slow down a little.
“Lunch is almost ready,” Taylor said.
“Oh, good.” Greg slid his backpack off and dropped it to the floor by the chair. He sat down and glanced at her laptop. “Hamilton?”
“Yeah, I can turn it off if you want.”
“No, it’s cool. I like this part.”
When the show ended, Greg sat back, still exhausted from his battle with the fear the night before. Thankfully, its grip had subsided with the dawn, but it was still lurking there, ready to overtake him if he thought about it too long.
“How was class?” Taylor asked.
“Ugh. Awful. Now we’re doing the hero’s journey. Shoot me now.”
“You’re analyzing?”
“Yeah with some book. I was supposed to get it at the start of the semester, but they kind of said it was optional. Now, not so much.”
“What is it?”
“Joseph Somebody’s something or another about the hero’s journey.”
Taylor laughed. “Well, that’s specific.”
A breath and Greg shook his head, closed his eyes, and sighed. “I just don’t know how I’m going to get all of this done. I keep thinking I’m making progress, and then I look up, and there are five more things I haven’t even thought about starting staring me down.”
For a long minute, Taylor sat there, thinking it wasn’t her place, but finally, she could stay silent no longer. “Look, I know I’m one to talk here, but is this what you really want?”
“What?” His head came up, confusion tangling there.
“I just mean, you’re working and going to school and everything, but is this really what you want? Are you going for your own vision or someone else’s dreams?”
Greg shook his head. “I’m not following.”
“Have you ever really thought, I mean really thought about what you want for your life, where you see yourself in ten or twenty or sixty years?”
“Sixty years? I’m just trying to get through today.”
“That’s what I mean. Everything is about today, the next five minutes. I don’t think we ever took the time to think about where all of this is leading.”
“Okay?”
“It’s like Hamilton. He had a vision for his life. He wanted to lead in the army, be a leader in the world, make a difference, make his mark. He didn’t know how to do that, and he was thwarted at practically every step. But he had a vision that drove him forward even when his life always seemed to get stuck in the mud.”
“I’m not Alexander Hamilton,” Greg said, and his voice faded.
“That’s just it. I think we all are, or we’re supposed to be in our own way. Maybe not on the big stage, but on the littler ones. We’re supposed to have a vision born out of our dreams. Like, for example, what dreams did you have for yourself when you were younger?”
As Greg looked at her, he could think of one that he would never say out loud. “I don’t know. To get through math class without being sent to the office?”
“Stop that. I’m being serious.”
“So am I.