In staying flexible, I don't mean bending and twisting before and after exercise. What I mean is maintaining an open mind about what life can bring at any given moment and realizing that you're ability to be passive or active is a choice left entirely up to you.
The emotional, intellectual and physical strains that people go through on any given day can be enormous. The attempt to find fulfillment in a day, or a month or a lifetime can seem all but impossible with the harrowing task of making ends meet financially and meeting as many personal goals as we think we might like to achieve over a course of time.
There has to be more. I'm not speaking in any religious sense, but rather in the sense that we cloud our minds so much with tasks and desires that don't lead us anywhere. Working a day-job, to make money, to buy things, to grow old and then to die. What have we built? What is left when we are gone? Each of us has our own calling and natural abilities that set us free when we embrace them.
My freeing activity is writing. I'd really like to write for a living. Copywriting, creative writing, academic writing, journalism; I love all forms of writing. I feel much more alive after I've written something from the heart. I know there is something in each person that makes them feel the way I do about writing. How long until you side step the massive boulder you're working on getting to the top of that never-ended hill? 10 years? 30 years? 45 years?
Doing what you have to do to survive for however long is your own prerogative. Some people figure out a way to make a living doing something they love. Others need to work different jobs that they don't like for a while until they're absolutely sure that they're meant to be on another path. I think relative to the time-line that is life, it doesn't matter whether it takes us 2 or 20 years to find out what we love to do and actually start doing it. What matters is that we make the change and stay ready to pounce when the opportunity presents itself. Before and after that point, it is a matter of listening, learning and taking as much in to make that beautiful moment where your life changes count for everything it's worth.
This post is dedicated to two completely un-related friends of mine, Neil D. and Julie Roads. Neil's talk on Mankind's Search for Harmony through Architecture and Julie's eBook called How to Become a Successful Copywriter both have inspired a ton of thought encouragement in myself and many others, I'm sure.
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1 comment:
It takes a ton of courage to change sometimes, though. Sometimes I think it is too easy for younger people to look at their parent's unhappiness with work or other things and think they will be brave enough to change, to avoid that. No one wants to be stuck doing something just to survive, but not many people can see their way out of it. It's a tough situation.
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