Musique Du Jour: Doves – Caught By the River May 12, 2009

I’m going to see them next week, and I’m very excited! It’s hard to pick one song that represents their sound, because their material is quite diverse. But, Caught By the River is my favorite Doves song TODAY, so here ya go .

On direction (or lack thereof) May 11, 2009

I was poking around on here a few days ago, for the first time in months. I’ll tell you–there might not even be one of “you” anymore–what brings me back in a moment, but anyway, I found the post below, something I had written almost a year ago and the timing could not have been more perfect.

What brings me back is a lot of… well, I don’t know if I want to call it soul-searching, but a lot of trying to figure out what my “ant thing” is, or at least something along those lines. (Read the post below if you have no idea what I’m talking about when I say “ant thing.”) So often when I end up in career conversations with people whom I love, I ask them, “What makes you feel alive?” or “What do you feel like you’ve been built to do?” And if they tell me, I respond by advising them to do just that. The advice is not so easy, however, when turned inwards. Are you kidding? That’s scary? What if people judge me? Reject me? Or [gasp] don’t LIKE me???????

Paulo Coelho, whom I affectionately (and jokingly) refer to as my distinguished Brazilian boyfriend*, talks a lot about the notion of the Personal Legend. He writes, “When you desire your Personal Legend, all the universe conspires to help you achieve it.” There’s a lot out there these days about manifesting your own destiny; i.e., if you truly believe it will happen, it WILL happen. I think people tend to read Coelho–er, my boyfriend–’s words and think them to mean that if we can only set our minds to it, we can make it happen. But, I don’t think this is what he’s talking about at all.

I believe the Personal Legend is that thing or set of things that is so intrinsically part of who each of us is. It’s what we are here to do, to learn, to achieve, it’s the journey we are to take, all that stuff. And while I certainly believe in free choice, I also believe that we have certain skills, personalities, strengths and limitations, and those largely dictate what we are built to do. Not what we necessarily choose to do, mind you (see “choice, free”) but nonetheless what we’ve been designed to do. And I don’t think that means we can’t be good at things that we haven’t been “built” to do. What I DO think it means, though, is that it will never feel quite the same as how it feels when you experience the peace, joy, fear, thrill, exhilaration, and expectancy of your Personal Legend.

Makes me wonder if those people who are absolutely miserable while chasing their dreams are chasing the wrong dreams altogether, if the universe is conspiring to not help them achieve those dreams because it knows (God knows) that it would lead to disaster.

It makes perfect sense to me that desiring my Personal Legend–that is, aligning ourselves with God’s beautiful and unique plan for me–would feel as though the whole universe has got my back (yo). I don’t for one second think that a life spent pursuing the Personal Legend is a life free of strife or struggle, but in the midst of all the crap, there is still something that feels so right about it, that you know you’re at least heading in the right direction. Something in your soul cries “YES” even though you are wondering what the heck you’re doing on this road, or desperate to exit stage left.

For me it’s become a process of elimination. I know what makes me feel alive, and conversely, what makes me feel dead. I think the Spirit of God has a lot of refining to do with me before I even have eyes to see specifically what it is I’m looking at, let alone gather the courage to go after it. But one of the things that keeps coming back to me is this: I love to write. I love everything from telling the story to creating a grammatically beautiful sentence. Heck, I even like the physical act of scraping my pen across a page.

Is it my ant thing? Will I glorify God by doing it? Maybe (I hope so!). I mean, maybe I’m wrong, but there’s always going to be a change that I’m wrong. So while my last few attempts to maintain a blog have been for entertainment purposes (I know, how silly!), this time around, I’m making a commitment to myself, and to what just might be my Personal Legend. I need the practice. I think we generally hold that we need at least 10,000 hours of practice, and I assume our Personal Legends aren’t exempt from this. Sweet. If I’m right, I’ve now only got 9,999.5 hours to go!

*I love him. Love, love, love, love, love. Normal people have the hots for Brad Pitt. I have the hots for old Brazilian men.

At the bus stop… May 9, 2009

“Hi again,” I say, smiling as I take my place on his left.

“Good morning.  Is it a good morning for you?”

“It is indeed!”

We both look up the street expectantly, though each of us knows we have a few minutes yet.

A few moments later: “Do you speak French?”

“Nah,” I reply, ”I used to when I was in high school.”

“Well you know, they say if you don’t use it you lose it!  I was just noticing your bag.”  It’s from Chapters, and it has French on one side, English on the other.  I spin it around in my hand so he can read it in English.  The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.

I smile sheepishly at him; even I know it’s a bit hokey.  “It was on sale, and it was the right size,” I explain to him.

“Did you know the seed for a Redwood is the exact same size as the seed of a Bonsai?”

“No, actually, I did not know that…”

“Yeah, there’s something that goes on after the seed starts to sprout, something about the root configuration, and that’s what dictates such a difference in size.”

“Isn’t it crazy the way the things in our world work sometimes?  It just blows my mind.  My roommate and I were watching Planet Earth, and some of the stuff you see… just incredible.”

“It really is.  I find the human aspect of that show very interesting as well, how civilizations interact and all that.”

“I haven’t actually seen any human activity in the series yet… except for the special features when they show the guy sitting in a lean-to for 15 days straight waiting for a Bird of Paradise to impress his Bird of Paradise lady friend.”

“Now what possesses people to do stuff like that?” he asks me.  “Sit in a lean-to for 15 days to see a bird dance… Like Mount Everest.  Why do people climb Mount Everest?  Just to say they’ve done it?”

I think on this for a moment and am about to say something when he continues.

“I guess it’s like that movie, Chariots of Fire.”

“I haven’t seen it, actually…”

“Ian Charleson’s character, he basically says, ‘I was put on this earth to run fast; when I run fast, I bring glory to God.’”

I cock my head to the side and look at him as I nod slowly.

“I guess,” he continues, “some people are put on this earth to climb Mount Everest, and because they do what they were put here to do, it brings glory to Him.  Or even ants, doing what they do as ants, that brings glory to the God who created them.”

As always, a brilliant early morning interaction is interrupted by the arrival of the 345, and we say goodbye for another day.