It is time to tell the voices of your history to shut it! Yes, I said shut it. Somewhere in our lifetime, there was some thing we wanted to do. Some thing maybe we wanted to be. Then we started letting everyone else tell us who, what, how, why and when to be anything, everything. Tell me who made them the boss?
I know some things we were told were truly for our own good. You know the ones, look both ways before you cross the street, save some money for a rainy day. They are good things as they have continued to keep us alive and well.
That’s not the things I’m talking about. I am talking about the things that set our souls on fire. The ones that made our hearts come alive. The ones that got our whole being to perk up.
Those things will be different for everybody. Could be singing, dancing, acting, painting, gardening, writing. You get the picture, creative things. Some time in your life you may have enjoyed those things. Unfortunately, somewhere in your life, someone put it in your head that you couldn’t do those things. Maybe it wasn’t a “safe bet” for a future career. Maybe they were in a bad mood and told you to stop what you were doing because it was annoying them. Maybe someone else stepped all over their thing and they believed no one should get to do some thing like that if they couldn’t. Who knows what their motivation might have been.
So you stopped. Maybe you never even started. Growing up we overhear all kinds of conversations. As kids we tend to internalize those conversations because it came from someone important to us, important to our welfare even. We did not want to disappoint that person so we never did anything with that thing we wanted to try. I’ll give you an example. When I was a kid, I wanted to try learning to play the violin. I loved the sound of violin music. I loved watching someone play because their whole being became involved with the music. I was told that I would not be allowed to learn because the sound of someone learning the violin is like listening to cats being tortured. (not making that up). That was it. No violin. Perhaps I might have proved to be a virtuoso. The world will never know. Or will they?
You see, we’re grown-ups now. I’m not saying that thing of ours is going to turn our worlds around. I’m not saying that thing is going to make us a millionaire and loved by the world over. I’m not saying any of that. What I’m saying is, that those things made our hearts come alive. It made us dream. It made us imagine all possibilities. That is all that those things needs to do now.
I don’t know if any of us will be any good at what we try. It may take a little time to show any promise of being good at whatever it is. There is only one way to find out if we are going to be good at something. We just have to do it. Do it as a hobby. Do it as a toe-hold on our sanity. Do it because it brings our souls back to life and our souls deserves to live, really live. The people around us deserve to see us with our inner lights turned on and turned up bright.
Just one more thing. Remember how soul crushing it was to not be able to at least try that thing out? Let’s do someone else the favor of not doing that to them. Let’s support someone else trying out theirs. Maybe it’s your kid, your friend, a parent. It doesn’t matter who it is. It is time to lift each other up and give ourselves the chance to see where that little dream we have, that little light, takes us. What a beautiful world we are going to create.
Share your some thing and how you’re doing with it in the comments. Chat with each other. Chat with me. Let’s be each others cheering section?
P.S. If that thing you try out doesn’t quite pan out, it’s okay. You can tweak it or change it all together. There are so many facets to our own art and how it gets expressed. I have a great friend that knits hats that he donates to Veterans’ Organizations. Who knew he’d be so good at it and get such joy out of it. There are no limits on the things we get to try, how old we are or how long it takes. Just do it.
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