Sometimes we know ahead of time.
Sometimes we don't.
Today I have the good fortune to watch and savor the approach and denouement of something big about to rock my world.
My life won't be the same because of it--already has been altered because of it.
I also possess the understanding of how that change will play out is in much more competent and creative hands than mine could ever be.
All I have to do is roll with the ride I signed up for.
Roll with it, baby.
Artistry courtesy of Little Man.
There is no tyranny like a perceived "lack" of purpose. The lack is a story. Ditch it, and your purpose can come out to play from behind your desires.
This huge petri dish that we all live in called Culture (I know, the double entendres abound :-) ) would have us believe desires are trouble. They provoke us and make us sad and get in the middle of relationships and otherwise rock the boat of maintaining that pretty facade called life we're all hanging on to.
Well, I am here to state for the record, and affirm all of your vague knowing to the contrary, that our aspirations, dreams, desires, notions, hopes--they are your lifeline. The only reason we might conclude that we don't know what our purpose is, is because we've been taught to forget what it was.
Our preferences, our joy pullers, our proclivity for contentment, they are our unique templates that get smashed and stomped on by various organized institutions over the years from the time we are impressionable, compliant babes in arms.
It's difficult to remember then, when every example we are shown about how to live extols lack. Lobsters pulling each other down trying to get out of the pot, and all that.
The good news is that our unique templates that cache our purpose are preserved in a sort of subconscious hibernation that might even include cryostasis from time to time.
They never die.
Have you noticed?
The provocation you might feel when they do insist on making their presence known again? That's buying into the lack thing, and perpetuating the story that living your purpose isn't possible.
Guess again.
It's impossible NOT to live your purpose.
Sure, you get to decide how miserable you'll allow yourself to be, pretending you can live well without surrendering to it.
But that's not living.
Have you noticed?
To the man who successfully identified 10,000 ways that didn't work. Because he knew there would be a 10,001st that would.
She flies through the air with the greatest of ease, that daring young lady on the flying trapeze.
A bit fuzzy, but having the time of her life.
He comes in every night, stack of folded, well-worn paper in hand, completely covered with fraction equations to solve that he's written down to remind himself how to do them.
He grabs a pencil from the cup on the teacher's desk and sits down for another evening of filling up his short-term memory with problems he won't remember how to solve the next day.
This used to bother me. I would get annoyed at his inability to remember and wonder what he was doing there, sitting in front of a computer night after night.
I would judge what his body and his brain had endured from the consistent amounts of alcohol he obviously had consumed over the years.
Then this week something shifted.
One night he did remember.
Multiplication and division, least common denominators, mixed numbers and reducing were easy.
He smiled a lot that evening, and it was a pleasure to see him proud of himself instead of frustrated with his inability to control his brain power.
This week he's back to coming up blank when he looks at the notes he's taken. The correct operation will not pop into his head at his bidding to solve the problem on the screen.
But that's OK. I don't care anymore.
I know he'll have another good day soon.
And that is all that matters.
These just cry out to be smashed to bits, don't they? :-)
Connected and Committed relationship transformation strategist.
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