Saturday, December 3, 2011

Do what you really want, follow your heart, live your dream

What should I do? You ask. And the answer is, "What you really want, what your dream is. Do what you really want to do." This question assumes a lot.

What I really want to do?

Why is it so easy to assume that I know what I really want to do?

And this message is easily mixed with contrary messages. Major in something practical in college, and follow your dream later or on the side. Then later it's -  you spent all this time and effort in this major, now you want to go do something else and throw it all away? Why, yes I sort of thought I was supposed to. I guess I misunderstood.

Do what your heart really wants. Or if you're a evangelical Christian, do what God has really called you to do.

Finding that out is half the battle. When somebody tells me that, or even worse, asks me that question, I think, Will somebody help me please?

John Acuff has a few candles of hope held out, in the form of some oddly surprising advice, considering that the book they come from is called "Quitter".

"Don't quit your day job."

Use it as a platform to launch into what you really want. What your dream is.

There it is again. Do what you really want.

Oh and by the way, insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. So don't waste your time on something that's not working.

Don't give up on your dream. The only one who fails is the one who gives up, or something like that.

There is one difference my life now and my life a year and a half ago. I'm not any closer to my dream, or even knowing what it is. But I have a job. And according to John Acuff, my job could be a launching pad or drawing board for my dream.

And to some of you, this sounds like a bunch of sentimental hogwash. I shouldn't have a dream or care about what it is - and if I don't know what it is why am I so worried about losing it? Maybe I should reword things for those special readers out there - I'm worried about missing what God really made me to do. He formed everyone with gifts and ways to channel his love and creativity and message to the world, and that's what I don't want to miss.

Perhaps John Acuff has it right when he says finding that is not a matter of discovery (oh the options!), but recovery (when did I know I was doing something I was supposed to? What are the hinge moments? When are the moments from my past I was doing something that stirred my deep gladness?). I threw in the word deep gladness because A. I can't remember what phrase John Acuff used and B. I pulled it from another great quote about mission, vocation and finding dreams.

"The place God calls you is where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet." That was Frederick Beuchner. One of my heroes.

Why am I so unlike my heroes?

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