Article Source: The Positve Observer

Written by - Tyson Davis - December 2008

Recently, I was watching a television interview with Alex and Stephen Kendrick, the brothers from Albany, Georgia, who wrote and directed the movie Fireproof.  When asked what they were trying to accomplish with their movies, they responded that they wanted to “reach out to the world from where they are.” Reaching out to the world is exactly what they have done.  They prove, once again, that we don’t have to leave where we are to touch the lives of others across the world.  With a budget of only half a million dollars, the movie Fireproof has, to date, brought in more than 31 million and counting and it all happened with a group of volunteer actors from a Southwest Georgia town with a population of less than eighty thousand.  It’s the little budget that could.  And it did.

Another Albany, Georgia native, Paula Hiers, found herself in even more of a confined predicament when her husband moved her and their two sons from her hometown to Savannah, Georgia.  While in Savannah, Paula suffered from full blown agoraphobia, a psychological condition which disables people from leaving their homes.  But from right where she was, she began to reach out to the world through her food, her sons and their girlfriends.  She began a catering business out of the little  “dollhouse” she found herself a prisoner in. Then suddenly Paula Ann Hiers, better known as Paula Deen, found herself unable to remain confined to her home.  She could no longer sit as a prisoner in her home and work to expand her business by having her sons and their friends deliver the food for her.  She woke up one day, prayed the serenity prayer, walked out of her house and walked into the world in a mighty way.  And now, people all over the world find comfort in cooking the dishes that Paula Deen, herself, found comfort in while suffering for years in the psychological "prison" called agoraphobia.  Oddly enough, Paula Deen couldn’t even walk out in to the world for a time, but she still found a way to reach out in to it, and that certainly contributed to her recovery.  She had to recover.  She couldn’t continue with her business if she didn’t.  And if she hadn’t reached out in to the world, her recovery may never have happened.

What about inventors?  Do they have to leave where they are to invent?  Where exactly was Penicillin discovered?  Did anyone have to fly to Morocco to find it?  It was always right where we were. 

You don’t have to live in Nashville, Atlanta or New York to write good music.  You write it where you are.  What about books?  John Steinbeck, one of America’s greatest writers, left California when it was essentially the Wild West, traveled to New York to find fame and a place to cultivate his work. It wasn’t until he left New York and went back to his home that he wrote his first book, and subsequently other great American classics like "The Grapes of Wrath" and "Of Mice and Men."   Although Steinbeck did leave California many years after returning, it was at home where he began his long string of critically acclaimed writings.  It was at home where his journey began.

So the next time someone tells you that you have to “go to where the action is” or that “opportunity doesn’t knock anymore,” remember that you can do whatever it is that you want to do right where you stand.  All you have to do is reach out to the world from where you are. If you reach out far enough, you’ll end up grabbing it. 

Ironically, the second movie by the Kendrick brothers is titled “Facing the Giants.”  Each of these people faced their own giants: the Hollywood establishment, agoraphobia and the apparent need to leave home to find a way…only to find that the pathway to writing  great classics led straight back to his Wild West hometown of Salinas, California.  Three very different giants and three seemingly insurmountable obstacles.  All they did was reach out from where they were and look at what happened.  They just had to pick their hand up to reach for it.