Writing is part of my meditative process to clarify my thoughts, to align my actions and to focus on my purpose. I write about my emotions, my shortcomings, and my ideas for a better world through poetry, prose, and what I call rantifestos every day, some of which I post here on my blog and on social media. I share them to help others move along their paths to live and lead with compassion.
Took me so long to learn this. Never too late to do what you love. To do it while you “work”. To do it to energize everything else you do.
Doing what you love now, even in small dosages–is the way to break out of that restrictive pot. Talking about what you love connects your heart to the world. And you begin to plant seeds, nurture a little garden driven by your interests, ideas, and passions.
To be a truly free agent, you must know who you are, what you want and what your value is to yourself and of course to the marketplace. Free agency is a mindset that nurtures a pursuit of excellence, a value of relationships, purpose, and a loyalty to the “game”. Free agency is not job hopping, or free lancing or random experimentation of careers. It can certainly start there but free agency is the continuous pursuit of one’s gifts and the generation of meaningful contributions to something more important than oneself.
What will make you happy? And when will you be happy?
I ask these questions in my workshops. To some these are easy questions. The answers just pop into their heads. To others these are confounding questions. A confusing kaleidoscope of words and images overwhelm their minds.
The point I try to make is that “happiness”, at least the western notion of happiness, is ephemeral and insufficient. That while this goal may swirl in our little heads it is not the end we want.
When a subject becomes obsolete,
we make it a required course.
Peter Drucker
What happens when two opposing and equally capable forces collide? In one corner we have the reigning champion with, a track record from the past, declining competence, but the power of all of the belts. In the other corner we have the challenger with little experience, smarter, faster, a future orientation and great ambition.
The Boomers vs the Millennials.
From the root vocare—to be called or a calling. Your vocation is your work, your day job that YOU called, your external calling. You are being defined by this work whether you like it or not. It is the way you are making a living, growing, and building a life. Your vocation may not be as serious as you hope it will be.
We need an avocation too! Most people miss this. Avocation, often the stepchild to vocation, is the internal calling, the calling from within. Some people mistakenly think an avocation is a “hobby.”
Silence becomes cowardice
when occasion demands
speaking out the whole truth
and acting accordingly.
Mahatma Gandhi
Whoever’s in charge of our spiritual airwaves must be pulling their hair out. The exponential growth in traffic for our thoughts and prayers, moments of silence has long ago exceeded the allotted bandwidth. Moments crashing into prayers and thoughts being obliterated by silence. It’s hard to keep up with the crisis of the moment. Our hearts have whiplash, scar tissue and calluses. And we don’t know what to think or how to feel.
I’m finding these “moments of silence” so meaningless. I believe in silence. I believe in the power of stillness and the ability to reflect on one’s thoughts, one’s behaviors and one’s potential actions. For self-improvement and for contributions to the greater good.
All that you touch you change
and all that you change,
changes you.
Octavia Butler
I’m inspired by the mesmerizing effects of the integration of science and spirituality that is revealing so many truths. This post may require a small micro dose of indulgence and patience to connect the dots. Observe whether what I wrote is altered by your interpretation.
“I was thinking about the GPS in my car. It never gets annoyed at me. If I make a mistake, it says, “Recalculating,” Sylvia Boorstein said recently on the On Being podcast. Isn’t that wonderful!
“Recalculating” should be our theme and mindset. Technology does not judge us, it merely attempts to serve. Yet we judge technology all of the time. We express our impatience, even our anger at our inert devices for their lack of instantaneous perfection. We curse spellcheck even though it is usually our big thumbs creating the stream of errata. No gratitude. Our technology is much kinder than we are! More forgiving. We need to be more like technology sometimes. Less emotional, more predictable and always recalculating.
Friendship is the hardest thing
in the world to explain.
It’s not something you learn in school. But if you haven’t learned
the meaning of friendship,
you really haven’t learned anything.
Muhammad Ali
We all know the dreaded words, words that were uttered to me 😊, “Can’t we just be good friends?”
But these are words I crave to hear now!
Youthful exuberance, animalistic needs, reckless ambition, and of course our insatiable egos pushed and push many people away from us. People who could be great friends.
And through our wit and charm and really, sheer luck, you established and maintained a cadre of comrades.
Seems like my circle of good friends is mirroring my life. It is declining to its essence. The constellation of shiny friendships which once seemed infinite like the universe is becoming a smaller system of souls whose gravitational pull keeps me together.
I am filled with gratitude but wonder where it is going and why.
I just want good friends.
You have to come to your closed doors before you get to your open doors… What if you knew you had to go through 32 closed doors before you got to your open door? Well, then you’d come to closed door number eight and you’d think, ‘Great, I got another one out of the way’… Keep moving forward. Joel Osteen
But what door are we looking for? There are clues that have always been there. There are things that are generating intellectual and emotional heat within you. Dreams of your childhood. These are difficult to fully express, so seeing examples, understanding possibilities, finding the words are often hidden behind doors right in front of you.
But we can’t keep settling.
Every week I send out a list of things I think are worth sharing—to kick your ass—new posts, resources, and recommendations straight to your inbox.
No spam. No fees. No Advertising. Unsubscribe whenever you want.
Subscribe
Free of fees, ads, and spam