“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs.
Ask yourself what makes you come alive
and then go do that. Because what the world
needs is people who have come alive.”~ Dr. Howard Thurman
So advised Dr. Howard Thurman, the philosopher and theologian who was a source of inspiration to the Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King and many others.
Dr. Thurman’s incredible invitation is timelessly relevant, even moreso as we see the great polarity and divisiveness so regularly stirred up and emphasized.
But ‘coming alive‘ isn’t the same as being synthetically stimulated (or over-stimulated), which tends to draw us away from what’s truly alive and worthwhile in (and through) us.
What makes us come alive?
If the world — and the organizations that are influential in it — need people who have come alive, then there must be more than a fair share of those who aren’t truly alive, but are sort of sleep-walking through the days. The walking dead.
Yet everyone has dreams and moments in waking time when we’ve ‘come alive’. What are some of those ‘come alive’ examples?
What happens when we attune to the clues and patterns that these moments point us to, and live into those?
We may find ourselves feeling more and more alive, and as a result, we’re more and more effective, influential in positive ways, and finding more joy and meaning in what the poet Mary Oliver called, ‘your one wild and precious life.’
When we’ve ‘come alive’, we’re in the moment, where joy, creativity, inspiration, genius and true flow are possible. When we’re alive in that way, we connect more deeply, enjoy more thoroughly, and reach out more genuinely and compassionately.
It changes our presence.
And likely, we only recognize the ‘come alive’ clues when we are actually present — an interesting practice given the ‘Age of Perpetual Distraction‘ in which we live, with myriad ‘stimulations’ attempting to seduce us out of attention and presence.
A practice. A creative adventure. A worthy experiment. Seeing it that way makes it a bit easier, and more fun, for me anyway.
You?
Big Love,
Featured Image Credit: Bacchante, c. 1892, by Frederic, Lord Leighton.
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Big Love & Bountiful Appreciation,
Jamie
November 8, 2016 at 1:12 am
Yes, follow your heartfelt passion, follow your dreams, and share what you have learned and created from ‘heart’… Yes,’ coming alive’ is so integral to feeling happy, and spreading that ‘happiness’ is where love grows. Watched a wonderful documentary last night on Australian story: A field of dreams, in which a small rural community in need of a bigger community ( the school closed down and they were missing children and young families) invite African refugee families to live and work with them. It’s working and its wonderful to see such generosity of heart and compassion to make these families feel ‘ at home’ and ‘like family’. It’s a bold and successful experiment which has led to more than 200 African families now being set up in rural Australia 🙂 <3. http://iview.abc.net.au/programs/australian-story/NC1601Q041S00
November 13, 2016 at 11:06 am
It’s too easy to sleep-walk through life, I come alive when I pay attention to nature and when I create – you can’t sleep-walk when you’re creating!
November 14, 2016 at 5:37 pm
It can certainly be, Andrea! Or be lured by the glamours into areas that aren’t really where we’d want to be ‘creating’ via giving them our focus and energy. Thanks for the lovely reminder that Nature, and creating, are restoring and enlivening. 🙂 Lots of love, Jamie