Here is a blog entry for the New Year. For me it probably weighs on my mind, directly or indirectly more than almost anything. To use one word it would be Motivation, but as simple as it is to string those 7 letters as 10 characters together, it is inversely difficult to comprehend, define and place a finger on the complexities of M O T I V A T I O N.
Preface: I wish my fingers could type as fast as my mind moves and jumps from one thought to another.
Some people are motivated by completing goals, some by money, some by pleasing God, some by being cool, some by helping others, some by getting their next fix, yet others by survival, finding their next meal, some by the lives of their children, some by being accepted, others by not failing, others by the stars, some happiness, and still many, many others. I do not know what is right, I have a better idea of what isn’t, but I think the bottom line is decided for each individual at the present time. People change their motivations depending on the parameters of the situation. Hopefully falling in the realm of consistency (if that is important to them) but sometimes so far astray they regroup and determine for what they are doing.
I’m sure at some point I have fallen under all those categories (minus the children and stars), however, now I have a hard time placing a finger on it. Yeah, God is good he’s hooked me up with whatever I needed. I would probably place myself in the 90th percentile for most blessed people for the way my life has turned out. But as great as God is, the abstract concept is too much for my meager mind to manipulate motivation.
Right now what motivates me is finding an avenue where I can make a global contribution to awareness and acceptance. However, the search is exhausting and provides little day-day comforts. I guess when spending most of one’s time in the world of ideas instead of events or people it can be easy to lose daily stimulants. Breaking people’s chains of comfort, for the sake of growth, also motivates me; those who limit themselves for protection and do not challenge and search for what is in their hearts. For when there is internal peace and acceptance, it is broadcasted to the world. However, I find it ironic my inability to do so for my own accord.
Granted there is something to be said about everything being a journey as opposed to a destination, but on a minute-to-minute basis, that theory can be draining and offers little reassurance or change. And prayer provides the same consolation of the long run, I guess my biggest problem is patience. I do not think I will ever accept no matter how hard I press, the decisions of mine rarely present change elements. For if not me, than who?
Be a Change Element!
3 comments:
I just e-mailed you and was going to write to myself, but then decided to read your blog, and now I'll write to you instead (and I guess anyone else who reads the comments).
For me, I think the heaviest thing that weighs on my mind is questioning my power to change things, the unfair things, the sad things, the awful spiral of the wrong events occurring over and over again. A part of me sees the ideal future as a realistic future. I think there are plausible solutions and many people are making drastic changes towards these solutions. But then the other part of me weighs down a little lower to the future in which my impact will be small. My thoughts become overwhelming and I feel like I am wasting time as each day passes considering how much needed be done.
But at the end of these thoughts there is faith in human beings, thoughts of all the good that has been done and that is being done right now,and I tell myself that I will do my best.
My motivation is knowing what is right, and knowing that I am here to act on it.
I also wanted to show you this poem:
Work Song, part 2: A Vision
If we will have the wisdom to survive,
to stand like slow growing trees
on a ruined place, renewing, enriching it...
then a long time after we are dead
the lives our lives prepare will live
here, their houses strongly placed
upon the valley sides...
The river will run
clear, as we will never know it...
On the steeps where greed and ignorance cut down
the old forest, an old forest will stand,
its rich leaf-fall drifting on its roots.
The veins of forgotten springs will have opened.
Families will be singing in the fields...
Memory,
native to this valley, will spread over it
like a grove, and memory will grow
into legend, legend into song, song
into sacrament. The abundance of this place,
the songs of its people and its birds,
will be health and wisdom and indwelling
light. This is no paradisal dream.
Its hardship is its reality.
- Wendell Berry
It's funny you say those things. One of the parts of our orientation is how to adjust to the idea of so many things only one person. I actually responded to it negatively as limiting our dreams before we began, although I understood the intent. I have some quotes and documents that people have responded to well because of being only one person, but I think you have the gist of it.
I, on the other hand, look at it as a large global problem, where if one thing is fixed (not sure what it is yet) other things will fall in to place...crazy maybe...but I still have hope in finding it. Because as you said, human beings although wired to look out for oneself, are naturally good.
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