So, You’re Telling Me There’s a Chance

Photo by Jon Flobrant on Unsplash

There’s a moment in Fear and Trembling where Søren Kierkegaard describes what he calls the leap of faith.

Not a calculated decision. Not a guaranteed outcome. A leap.

It’s the moment where the math stops working… and something in you decides to move anyway.

If you’ve ever tried to do something that didn’t make logical sense—but felt necessary—you’ve probably been there.

The seduction of the leap

In The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron offers a version of this idea that’s become almost a mantra:

Leap, and the net will appear.

It’s a beautiful sentence.

It’s also a dangerous one—if you don’t understand what kind of “net” she’s talking about.

Because taken literally, it can start to sound like everything will work out no matter what—that the universe will catch you, that risk itself is somehow rewarded. And that’s not actually true.

When hope is irrational—and necessary

In September of 1986, I believed something that didn’t make sense.

Carla had been diagnosed with AIDS.

At the time, that diagnosis was widely understood as a death sentence. The odds weren’t just low—they were essentially nonexistent.

And still, something in me said:

There’s a chance.

Not because I had data. Not because I had a plan. But because the alternative—accepting that outcome as inevitable—was something I couldn’t live inside of.

So I leapt.

Not into certainty. Into relationship. Into time. Into staying.

That kind of belief isn’t about predicting the future. It’s about choosing who you are while you’re still waiting to find out what happens.

When hope becomes distortion

Now let’s hold the other side.

There’s a scene in Dumb and Dumber where Jim Carrey’s character hears that his chances are “one in a million.”

And he lights up:

So you’re telling me there’s a chance!

It’s funny because we recognize the distortion instantly. He isn’t responding to reality—he’s responding to possibility, detached from probability.

And we’ve all done some version of that. Stayed in something long after it stopped being mutual. Chased an outcome because we were so close. Convinced ourselves that persistence would eventually override reality.

This is where hope starts to slide into something else.

Not faith.

Compulsion.

The carnival problem

I remember the first time I played a carnival game.

You know the kind. The bottle ring toss. The basketball hoop that’s just slightly off. The prize sitting right there, within reach.

And you almost get it.

Close enough to feel like the next try could be the one.

So you try again.

And again.

And again.

Because the system is designed to keep you in that feeling:

There’s a chance.

But the truth is, the odds are stacked. The near-miss is intentional. The “chance” is engineered to keep you playing.

This is the addictive version of hope—where belief isn’t expanding your life, it’s trapping your attention.

So what is a real chance?

This is the part most people skip.

A real chance isn’t defined by the odds. It’s defined by what the belief does to you.

Sometimes a leap of faith moves you toward something that matters, even if it doesn’t work out the way you hoped. It stretches your capacity—to love, to create, to stay present—and leaves you with something real.

Other times, what looks like a “chance” keeps you circling the same loop, asking you to ignore what you already know. Instead of expanding your world, it quietly narrows it.

The difference isn’t optimism versus realism.

It’s whether your belief is in service of your life… or quietly consuming it.

The net that actually appears

This is what Julia Cameron was pointing to.

The “net” isn’t guaranteed success. It isn’t external rescue or a perfectly timed outcome.

It’s what you build in the process of leaping.

The skills you didn’t have before. The relationships that form because you showed up. The deeper capacity to stay with uncertainty.

It doesn’t catch you from falling.

It changes what falling means.

Holding both truths at once

This is the real work.

Learning how to hold two things at the same time:

Some leaps are necessary—even when they don’t make sense. Some “chances” are illusions that cost more the longer you stay.

Discernment lives in that tension.

Not in eliminating risk. Not in blindly trusting it.

But in asking:

What is this belief asking me to become?

Question of the Fortnight

When have you had a real chance…
but your nervous system wasn’t ready?

And when have you kept playing…
because the possibility felt better than the truth?