Remembering Our Why?
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What is our why? It is so common to lumber through life not asking why? What is your why? Why do you get out of bed in the morning? Are your reasons spiritual? religious? intellectual? creative?
What is your why?
Do you make long lists of goals?
Do you lust after money, or seek love?
Let’s us make an effort to remember the why.
What are your values? Isn’t it funny how people can rush through life, and forget their values? They can forget that a value is even possible. This is the damage of a fast-paced, unthinking society.
Values can be tested and values can be earned. Values can be changed, but I regret the day that nobody even dares to have a value.
So what are your values? Do you value honesty? Why?
Do you value integrity? Why?
Do you value authenticity? creativity? Has life taught you to laugh in the face of danger? You might find your active values differ from your passive values. What you write on paper might not be the values enacted by your soul, in your day to day life. For instance, you might think you despise gossip, but feel curious and engaged when a friend divulges a dirty little secret to you.
For a long time I thought life was about the pleasure we seek. Then I realized life is about the pleasure we earn.
Another time I thought life was about being a saint, then I realized that life might be about being a human. I bought a pin that says “I have no idea what I’m doing”. I’d rather have no idea what I’m doing than be clinging to life with white knuckles, hoping to be perfect every second.
Some people place a high premium on money. Money makes the world go round they sing happily. Money gives us idea sometimes that we don’t normally have access to. Money does make THIS world go around in a lot of ways. But money does not make every world go around in the same way.
What if you value community and compassion? Our values can test us. In every value there are tests of such values. If you say you are a person who values community and compassion, you might be tested to always show or share that compassion no matter the situation.
If you value money above all else, you might be tested by situations in which money did not have the power to solve, soothe or liberate you from what ailed you.
If you value creativity, you might be tested to earn this creative power by constant focus and determination. You might be tested to write instead of going out to eat fancy dinners with friends and associates.
Sometimes values come to us through contrast. We experience one thing and we don’t like it-it is a negative, painful, or sorrowful experience for us, and suddenly a value is created-the desire for the opposite of that.
Sometimes values come to us through positive experiences. We attend a birthday party for a parent or a friend’s baby, and we realize-we value connection. We feel good when we spend time with others-a value is created and confirmed within us.
Of course in some ways values have always been in us. Life gives us opportunities to investigate these values further. Do you value work? Work is a critical mass subject in American society and most other global societies. People are very concerned and interested in the idea of work. People are very empowered and feel effective inside the idea of work.
Some people feel ineffective inside the common ideas of work. Some people feel exhausted and belittled inside the idea of work, but if there is nothing else to do-its more common than not that someone will suggest you “work”, or “get a job”. This idea is becoming less straightforward as some jobs are coming up for replacement by AI. The idea of purpose creeps in. Its funny how no matter how people try, they can’t seem escape religion.
But, the loss of work might be a concern to some who derive their power and industriousness, and even their identity from their ability to work. Ironically these are the people who are least effective in work. because the idea of work can vehemently distract us from actually providing effective value to other people.
Imagining, downloading ideas, dreaming up things is put on a pedestal during school, prized during childhood, but then dismantled and taken down from its pedestal as one enters the “adult” stage of life.
I often wonder why this is. Dreaming is all we have in some ways. What can be said of the obsession with movies and TV? Are these not active dream scapes, and yet in our day to day lives we deny ourselves the creative time to dream. We don’t even allow ourselves to think of creative solutions to a boring night at home. Thing how fabulous, how fantastic how exciting life could be if every time the power went out, we allowed ourselves to think of exciting games and diversions, rather than immediately scour the house for which iPhone was still charged so we can keep tuning in and dropping out?
Where. has. authentic. creativity. gone.
I know it’s not dead. It can’t be..and someday we will know what we truly value.
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