It’s interesting to me that if we really want to find the push to do the work that’s important to us, we need most to keep looking within. The question that is our biggest motivator is or should be, “What do I believe?” It’s easy, easy, easy to say, I believe in Love, I believe in Peace. But what we believe in is what we act on. So if we’re not acting from love, a couple things could be happening.
We could be frightened, frightened to take out our precious, precious values and expose them to a scornful world. But then we waste them. Our values are there to act on. And if people dismiss us because our beliefs are too corny or naive, ok. We then need new associates. We have a much better chance of making Peace work if we ally ourselves with like-minded, like-hearted, and like-souled people.
Some of us may like the notion of ourselves as a sort of Joan of Arc, ready to take out our beliefs only when the perfect cause comes along. But every cause is perfect and every cause is flawed. Act now, get in practice. Then should the big cause come along, you’ll be well practiced in the art of dreaming your ideals into being.
And some of us haven’t done the work to develop our ideals to the point that they direct our lives. We may say we believe in X, that grand and glorious X, but in fact it never touches our lives because we’re afraid to really believe that x will make a difference. We like the way it sounds. We hang with people who also say that. For whatever reason, we haven’t taken our spoken values into our hearts.
That means that something else is operating. So, better, far better to dig down and see what’s really going on. I’ve been reading a lot of empty my mind books lately. It’s been wonderful to uncouple from life a bit. But in my little sci-fi fantasy world, magic is afoot. And in this series the author talks about magic being imposed from the outside… If I think about it, the commercial brainwashing we undergo (every time we open a magazine, sit on a bus, watch a tv, open our computer) does a very good job of diverting us from what is deep and meaningful.
Our hearts are true… we just need to get there! So… what drives you?
Another much needed message, both the poem and the commentary above it. Thank you, Ann!