Set Your Life on Fire

Day 174

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I’ve been thinking hard about what I want.  Very hard.  What do I want to do?  How do I want to live my passion and purpose?  How on earth will I make money at it?  (Man cannot live on overdue bills alone.)

And nothing, absolutely nothing, was coming to the fore.

  • I tried imagining that I’d won the lottery and could, therefore, do anything I wanted.  What would that be?
  • I imagained that I was famous, and that I was on Oprah.  What did I want to talk about?
  • I pretended that I was the most successful person at my highschool reunion.  What was I telling my former classmates?

I found out that if I was a multi-millionaire, all I wanted to do was eat good food and spend lots of time at tropical beaches.  If I was on Oprah, it seemed that all I wanted to do was to talk politics and social issues.  As the most successful person at my high school reunion, all I wanted to do was look fabulous and hear about what everyone else was up to.  (Then I got sidetracked by looking up some deliciously retro pinup-style outfits.)

 

The let’s-pretend method was clearly not getting me anywhere.

And then I remembered the ‘pretty goth song’ I posted in 10 Things You Didn’t Know About Me.  And I realized that the question wasn’t “what do I want to do?”, the question is “who do I want to be?”  But it was this stanza that struck the bell of my soul:

But maybe you touch one life
And the world becomes a better place to be
Maybe you give their dreams another day
Another chance to be free

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve listened to that song and just hadn’t heard  that.

I’m just a little closer to aligning with the understanding of my purpose, of what I am supposed to do.  Someone, clearly, doesn’t want me spending my life at the beach. 

Dangit.