Another Path

We are always starting again, it seems.

Always a new path is seeming to appear just off the one we thought we were on. No signposts.

Is it a path? Or Is it a path wild animals took before us, a “game trail”, winding along a hillside seemingly aimlessly. Until you follow it and find it leads to water.

Of course it could also be a dead end. More than once I’ve taken both what I thought was a pathway just to find it stopped at a cliff. Other times I’ve followed the faintest of game trails, just to find the elusive animal leaped away, and the trail itself vanished so I had to retrace the steps back to the known.

Beginning this blog again is a new path. Obviously it’s been a while and I’ve been wandering in deep woods. Or so it seems from the absence of work here. Instead my path of these last few years was essentially hijacked, as so many of us learn, by the decline of elderly parents whose sudden needs are so overwhelming there is little time for one’s own path pursuits. I don’t say this unkindly; I say it realistically yet knowing that no parent intends to hijack their children’s path, nor do they want to have to. Walking with my mother’s on her path through a decade of dementia is one path totally unexpected to each of us. Trying to join my father on his path with cancer, till he decided to end treatment and resisted all company, was another. For them to coincide, to unify into one path under that complicated term “home hospice,” 45 years after their lives together untwined in divorce, is one of those things to muse on, if there’s any time to do so.

A lot of people are finding themselves on new paths suddenly as well. The invisible but deadly virus in the air around us has put the humans around the world on a new path   and one none of us expected really.

We shelter in place, any plans and paths we thought we were on vanished beneath our feet. We emerge in masks only to find the world around us has changed. Jobs are gone or may never come back. Careers we thought we had have veered off cliffs. We’ve spent time with families, if lucky, or learned to try to connect with them across a airwaves and wifi and in the worst case, were unable to see them as their path ended and ours was barred.

Yes we are all on a new path, one we didn’t expect, and for many of us, our life paths feel hijacked.

Take a moment here. The sun has come up again. The sky is beautiful no matter what is happening in it or where you are, from storms to sun, clouds and rain to striking blue.

This moment is the only step we need to know.

And that’s good because it’s the only one we’re certain of.

If you can see the sky and take a breath, you are on a path and it will lead somewhere.

It’s always been this way, but being shocked into living in this moment, even if it’s the only way to get through years of living moment to moment, day to day as we do near the end of our lives and as we do accompanying those we love to their final breaths, and as we do when faced with the unknown before us, we quickly realize path will take care of itself. For now.

We will find our way again soon.

It certainly will be a new world and a new path, as we all start anew, but we will find our path that brings us to being our heart-filled self, authentic and fierce in our purpose to live shining.

Take a moment again. Just for fun, doodle a path you’ve just discovered leading out your door and to a world you wish to see anew.

 

As If alive…

So much is written about each of us living as if… as if… as if…

 And the ‘as if…’ is full of our dreams.

 

Live as if… you are enough.

 

Live as if … you are supported, being just who you are.

 

Live as if… you are worthy of joy, of love, of being seen and appreciated just as you are.

 

Live as if… you are entirely supported by an abundance within — one that is as vast it is as incomprehensible

and awesome as a night sky filled with equally incomprehsible distance, invisible substance, and star stuff.

 

For you are.

 

 

And then our Work-work voice kicks in: (Who does it sound like?)

 

“OK, I’m living this way…..  Yes. Now!…”

Enter heavy weight lifter from your inner vision, and the guttural sounds made lifting this enormous belief seem to begin.

“OK, I’m living this way…..  Yes. Now!…” 

 

When a child, was such imagination and vision ever so much work?

Did we scowl and groan at the weight of our ‘living as if’ we were the princess or the cowboy, the Ninja or the dancer, the sky-skipper, or the inspired Olympic athletes which in our imagination, heart, dream, and inner child-like souls, we actually were?

 

No, that ‘living as if’ was effortless. It was full of light and joy. It was easy, if not a preferred place to spend our time, away from the dreary, fearful, angry, harsh, lonely, or busy, noisy and chore-laden boxings of ‘home life.’

 

So why is it not now as easy as when we were child-like children?  Why do we need instructions and affirmations to remind how how light — light–filled and lightly — going It was to live as if our ‘visions’ and our ‘dreams’ were real?

 

I suggest it still is.

 

And, I suggest, that the heaviness, the Work-work weight-lifer, is learned, whether when we had to  ‘grow up’ or when we felt ourselves suddenly very alone in this world, learning to make our way forward.

 

So living ‘as if’, taking action ‘as if’ has become a verified tool. We use it as a tool to get our souls engaged in feeling, feeling our longing might actually be met with substance.

 

But stop. Breathe for a moment. Don’t hold ‘living as if’ as a tool, whether a chisel or a spade or a recipe book.

 

Instead, follow the feeling of Living — the lightness, the joy, the excitement of a child —  as if you already are the dancer, the Ninja, the light-filled being that as children we didn’t doubt were real, bursting forth from inside us. And listen to what that lightly, light-filled skipping, real being would do next – then do it. Do it as if … alive.

 

Sometimes, when doing that, we feel (perhaps again) the cold water of so-called reality (usually others’) in our face, damping our bright shiny fire of Living lightly.

 

Ignore it (this time).

 

You are here to shine, inside out.

Your dreams and yearnings are your Soul purpose and your sole purpose for taking up air today.

Close your eyes, dry the splash off, and again live,

as if,

you are here to really live on fire, inside out.

 

If it’s not destructive, nor hurting of anyone else, why not live while you’re spending time here?

 

I believe you can do this.

 

Here’s a reminder question:

 

The Queen or King of our fabulous Kingdom has commissioned me to do a special task, which only I can do.

It is to _______________________________________________.

I’ve got all the skills and resources to do so, so in this moment, I live as if it’s underway…

For, I’ve said Yes!

 

Now, I do these things right now to get started:

______________________________

______________________________

______________________________

 

Enjoy this day of living as if you are alive, for you are!! Yay!

 

Blessings on your journey,

 

Elizabeth Darby

Committed to Becoming

“Whatever else happiness may be, it is in neither having nor being, but in becoming…”

John Ciardi

 

 

So how are your New Year’s resolutions coming? Have you yet re-solved to have more resolve, as the root of these states of being is ‘to loose and to let free’ a way or a something; it’s a way of detaching and washing away.

 

I’ve been thinking about the difference between a promise – to others or to self – versus a commitment.

 

Which would you rather have, whether from self or from others, in this Life-time moment of your journey? A commitment or a promise?

 

Both promise and commitment come from the same Latin root as well: mittere,   which is first ‘a mission’, a sending or dispatching on a highly important journey often of a sacred sort.

 

So far, a promise or a commitment, both sound pretty good.

 

Our life-journeys, becoming a shining Best of who we each are, on task and on purpose, are a highly important and yes, even sacred journey. That we call it our life, or life-time, is just a reminder that the clock is ticking on this, our journey, whether we plunge into it with joy, commitment, promise, resolve or hesitance.

 

But for some reason, I’ve been feeling like all the ink on ‘promises’ is usually followed with a sense of ‘in the future’… as in I promise to … whether it’s ‘to have and to hold’ for an indeterminate time, or a promise to stop doing something destructive,  or a promise to accomplish something, it feels like we are setting our promise in the future.

 

 And yes, I know many also speak of God’s promise, and know it is not just now but for all time, so that’s set into the eternal now and future as well. But I’m not in the business of doubting God or that particular promise; some mysteries are best left mysterious as to ‘when and where’, so I’ve found. Time is relative at the God-level of Creation, I’ve come to learn.

 

A promise is a mission with a ‘pro’ in front of it — the old Latin root, pro as in ‘forward’.  No wonder when we make promises to ourselves or others, we have a sense of it being a future event, whether it’s starting from now on or, well, maybe, tomorrow. 

 

Check your New Year’s resolutions – did they start with a promise of when they would start, or with a setting free of last year’s hangover via resolution?

 

Commitment. It’s a sturdy word. It feels solid when you commit to yourself to do something, or when someone else commits to you and vice-versa. A commitment  feels like it’s already accomplished in some energetic way, as in ‘I commit to this work’ and ‘I commit to living fearlessly and on task and on purpose.’ Doing so feels already accomplished and is indeed already underway as soon as the sentence is over, with no …  after it.

 

Indeed commitment is a mission with a ‘com’, as in ‘sent with’; it’s to undertake together, and to be entrusted to take a risk with someone or something. It is telling self and others you are trust-worthy; your mission, should you decide to accept it,  whether of your work or your purpose is already undertaken.

Now back to happiness … which one feels when committed. Are you committed to making your life journey, on task and on purpose, as happy — as Yes — as might be possible?

 

Then let us return to the wisdom of the great John Ciardi, and his astute 20^th Century observation:

Yes, happiness is found in the pursuit of becoming …

 

May your life-time in the coming year reflect your becoming a person who has created your own work and path in life, putting to use your talents and gifts in service of our world, doing the work you are here to do . . . even as you work to create it today!

 

May this be your commitment to yourself, and to all those around you, cheering you on.  Including me!

 

Here is the rest of the quote, from John Ciardi’s delightful essay “What is happiness?” from oh so long ago, and still so accurate.

 

Happiness is never more than partial. There are no pure states of mankind.  Whatever else happiness may be, it is neither in having nor in being, but in becoming. What the Founding Fathers declared for us as an inherent right, we should do well to remember, was not happiness but the pursuit of happiness. What they might have underlined, could they have foreseen the happiness-market, is the cardinal fact that happiness is in the pursuit itself, in the meaningful pursuit of what is life-engaging and life-revealing, which is to say, in the idea of becoming. . . .

 

 Blessings on your day!

 

Elizabeth Darby

 

 

Believe in Your Purpose

To the 1.3 million long-term unemployed:

Who today must feel…

Scared? Angry? Frustrated. . .

Both in your search and your lack of support in a society where the recession is still very real, but more real is that the world of ‘work’ as you knew it is, likely, changed forever.

 

After the anger and the panic, what is the feeling of your current moment on Earth?

Bereft? Abandoned? Desperate?

 

Long-term unemployed is not a resume builder of a term.

I know that and you know that.

 

It is not a category to which anyone wants to belong.

I, too, know that. Everyone, with a job or not, feels that.

 

It is the purgatory of career and job, a gross fun-house of reflecting mirrors which distort one’s self-image into all kinds of shapes, most of them negative and a lot of them downright freakish. I know that; it’s a horrible place to be.

It feels to be a category that is the anethema of success, or even of ‘doing okay’ on this life-journey.

And so the sand grows quick as the sinking feeling of your heart and soul grows again burdened with this newest insult of continued support as you seek work cut-off by a population of unfeeling, insensitive politicians who neither feel your pain nor want to face those of us ‘unemployed’ in the statistical sense of ‘productivity in the economy’. While they, of course, collect bonuses for their action and inaction. It’s everything unjust and unfair to be subject to these puppeteers of the American promise.

Meanwhile, the media loves tossing souls into this ‘there but for the grace of God go the rest of us…” story.

 

But this is your life, your real life, not a ‘story of the moment. It is your visceral experience and your journey, and thus you can make it have the ending you desire.

 

We’ve all been there, most of us over and over. Starting over and over, But I know that does not help how you feel at this moment.

 

So instead I offer this encouragement:

Just for a moment, believe You, just as you are in this moment, have everything you need to be the best You in this day.

Just for a moment feel like it’s going to be okay, this journey of yours, no matter how spooky the corridor at the moment.

 

Why?

 

Because if you are here, you clearly — clearly — have a Work, a Task, and a Purpose yet to accomplish.

 

Feeling that, in this moment, will allow today to begin anew, not ‘yet again’.

 

Your ‘job’ as you knew it may be gone and never come back like it was before.

 

Your ‘old way of being’ — however satisfying or unsatisfying your job and work was before you found yourself among the ranks of ‘long-term unemployed’ — will have to change. Probably it already has.

 

Your new way, the one that begins today, starts with your feeling, believing, and taking action as if you have a task at hand.

And you do.

You have an accomplishment to undertake. Starting today.

 

No, it’s not to find a job.

 

Your task and your accomplishment is to Create Your Own Work.

 

Create from your experience, breathe, strength (you have a lot it if you’ve been ‘searching’ for these last challenging years), joined with your unique talents the work you — and only you — are here to do.

 

What great thing would You — only you — like to accomplish today and tomorrow in your life? Not long term, just today and tomorrow.

 So often we get stuck trying to find the proverbial shoe that fits; lots of ‘advice’ out there talks of ‘retooling’ and reconfiguring and retraining. Lots of ‘re-‘ as in ‘do it again’, as if the first time wasn’t enough. We all know it was.

 

What if, just for a moment, you instead see what great Work is pushing to come out from inside you.

What do you see that needs to be done that you, specifically you, have all the talents, care and energy to do just where you are in this moment of Now?

What of You can Be, just in this moment, creating your form to fill rather than looking for the right size box in which to pour oneself?

 

It’s subtle: You create your box, your work, your form in this world —

as opposed to looking for a box of someone else’s making to fill.

 

A long time ago, my daughters struggled with their difference in this world: We all do at some point (or many) in our lives. They were and are highly intelligent girls, deeply heart-felt, with vision and dreams, a sense of story and purpose, all facets that simply didn’t fit the squares and circles of your average public school.

 

I told them then, as I tell you now:  Don’t chip away at the facets of you to squeeze into the square or circles that are ‘acceptable’, or to fit the Norm, whatever that is, or the fickle slots of a job-market. You are diamonds, with facets that sparkle. That which doesn’t fit, and maybe even has a flaw in it, is what makes you who you are. You are here to sparkle and shine, as only you can, with all your facets.

Here are a couple of soul-reminders from my book:

 

When I was 8 or 9, I loved to _________________________________

I believed my magical powers were ____________________________ and that I was (and am) here to do this magic in the world: _____________________________________________

_____________________________________________

 

When we feel bereft (I know this feeling well), sometimes the only way through it is to invoke Magic, and remember what endless possibility again feels like.

 

After all, you’ve been practicing and succeeding at the magic needed for survival for these past years of job-search, making ends meet, getting through each day.

 

You can do this:

 

Create your own work; do the work only you can do here, in this time and moment on Earth.

 

I believe you not only can, but that this is what you are here to do.

 

With blessings on your New Year, creating your new form in this world.

Elizabeth

 

 

 

Joy is the Essence of Success

Joy is the essence of  Success…

My teabag tag on this cold winter’s night.

Don’t you love gifts like this?  It is a winter’s night when the snow has melted slightly and turned to black ice, the moon grows full, and it is a deep cold. The frosted air and all its various contributions — the musky fox who darted through the yard a bit ago, car exhaust, someone’s passing cigarette smoke, the dog who has recently over eaten, and now a sweetly scented cup of spicy tea — clings close to the ground to join into a soupy, heady moment in which to be aware of life passing by.

And yet, this is just it . . . and thus the gift of a moment in time no matter the moment:

When one feels a success, one feels joyful.

When one is joyful, one is a success.

 

Yes, it’s that simple.

 

When do you feel joy?

 

When do you feel a success?

 

Wouldn’t it be nice to remember to feel either or both of these during many moments of each day or on a cold, winter’s night?

For feeling each or both is, in fact, a moment’s choice.

Choose it now and take a deep breath! If in this moment, you are able to connect to heartfelt joy, you are a success. And, if in this moment, you choose to feel a success — you are here doing good work, after all, right? Being your shining best in this moment? — then you feel joyful.

Round and round it goes, success to joy to success to joy…

 

I’ve been thinking a lot about success lately. It seems there are so many recipes to achieve it and so many encouragements in the world to define and attain it. There was even an entire TED radio hour on it on a recent NPR show (good to listen to! Here’s the link: http://www.npr.org/2013/10/25/240777690/success ).

 

When I first heard this show several weeks ago, I scribbled notes immediately as I took issue with so much of what was discussed, for it seemed there was something missing from many of the definitions of success explored in that assembly of speakers.

And what I felt was missing was simply this:

Heart.  Shine,  Soul.

A sense of Being You, On Task and On Purpose.

A sense of being here to do specifically what you are here to do . . . And doing that.

Call it living one’s shine and using one’s gifts for this world.

Although we try to measure success in so many outward ways, as the Ted Radio Hour on NPR explored, the real measure of success is exactly what my teabag reminds me tonight:

Joy.

 

And that, simply, is what I hope any of you feel after working through my book or in working with me one-on-one.

Joy and Success: You are being You at your best and deepest heart-level.

I thank you, at the end of this year in this season of returning light and cold nights, for your joy, for your heartfelt connection in reading my thoughts, here or in my book, or even just for smiling after looking at my work here. Your many likes, nice comments and follows make me feel joyful and have helped to make Here You Begin, a tiny book of good intentions in a sea of self-help gurus, what I feel to be a success.

And so I thank you again!

If I were to define success, for any one of us, you know it would be this:

To feel that you are here, shining, doing your work, on purpose and on task, using your unique combo of talents and heart for this world and in this world.

And that makes everyone around us — as well as you and me— full of joy.

Thank you for daring to shine in whatever moment is before you in your life in this moment, right now.

Blessings!

Elizabeth Darby

What can you give…

What can you give to the world
that no one else can give?

Your shine

Your gifts, talents, and passion

You

You’ve got good work to do today!

Be the best you can be today.

 

All there is to it.

On Surrender — to Your Work and to Your Life as the journey it is…

Surrender to one’s Work, not work, is the essence of Life, not just a ‘life’ or the life you are told to ‘get’.

As many say, while we live, we must Live – with every ounce of our being, joy, focus, happiness, and use of our talents and gifts. To live, spending pennies of our life-moments and not living as if we will never have ‘enough’, as of course we can’t take those pennies — our moments of time — with us.

We have to live pouring out abundance and not being a miser with our energy, our love, our talents and gifts, or our Living. As another famously said, I want to be spent when I die, not die with energy and more to give hoarded away inside.

I am re-reading a lovely, life-changing book by the late Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross and David Kessler entitled Life Lessons.

The gist of it, through story, David Kessler’s beautiful reflection, and Dr. Kubler-Ross’s late in life wisdom (she herself was nearing the end of her life at the time of publication), is that it is when we embrace our own inevitable death, we truly are able to live – to Live, On Task and On Purpose with each of our moments we still have to spend here. Too often we do get to this gist of living only with bad medical news or late in life; what a pity, as when we live knowing life is short, we tend to engage more with our time, our love, our passions, and make use of the gifts, talents, and heart-felt purpose we each feel inside. Life becomes more like a lovely ice-cream cone; you know you can’t save it for later when it’s already dripping down your hand so enjoy it thoroughly now.

Toward the end of the book is a chapter on Surrender in which David Kessler tells the Story (Truth begets Story) of a 50-year-old man who faced losing a leg due to complications of his diabetes. He needed encouragement and permission to feel all that was associated with the crisis in front of him and was really angry, of course, as he careened through the grief of his circumstance. David Kessler picks up the story here, as he asked the man if he could “surrender to the situation as it is”.

‘”The horrible possibility that you may lose your leg is constantly on your mind; it’s dominating your thoughts, it’s filling you with fear and anger. Why not think about it for a while, be with it, then let it be? If you’re going to lose your leg, you’re going to lose you leg. Thinking about it, pretending that you are not thinking about it, or refusing even to talk about it isn’t going to make it happen or not happen.”

‘The man responded:  “So if I make peace with losing my leg, if I completely surrender, will it be saved?”

‘I reminded him that deep spiritual work is deep spiritual work. We can’t bargain with it, we can’t say, “If I’m spiritual enough, will I get the prize?” . . .’

 If I’m spiritual enough, will I get the prize?

How many of our moment-to-moment situations in our lives fill us with fear and anger, the twins of demons that eat our life-moments, ebb our energy and our health, and push us off center and off task and purpose? We’re taught culturally never to surrender. And yet, how many of us can fill in another situation, to replace the one in the story, perhaps not as serious or perhaps more, which we pretend not to feel, or think about, but which eats us alive? Especially when starting over, newly jobless or careerless, made redundant and fearing for our future well-being, after life-changing events have happened when returning from war or the race, as well as when starting out for the first time in our life-journey, facing school debts and feeling clueless?  We all have these moments.

And we do bargain:

If I’m special enough,will  I win the prize?

If I’m perfect enough, will I win the prize?

If I’m spiritual enough, I win the prize?

We do this, if only to assuage the fear of . . . surrender.

Surrender to what?

Surrender to what life is presenting, at this moment, as we begin again this day our journey in a finite life-time.  Surrender to trust, to peace, to knowing there is good and light somewhere here, if we just let Life and living be what it is in this very temporary moment.

It’s true that feeling that peace even for a moment can shift your journey from fear to interesting to relief to excitement to even delight.

Surrender is not ‘I give up’, but rather ‘I’m okay and I will look to see what I can do here . . . what are my choices?’ In peace that this   is  the  journey   we often can see what is a choice, a new route, a place of beauty, a new call.  In your choice to be You, authentically and joyfully you, working with your gifts, following your instinctive Yes, is your power. And there is also your Life, being fully lived moment by moment. We surrender to Life and decide, in peace, that we can let it be . . . a journey.

David Kessler writes:

“We take back our power and regain peace of mind when we let things be as they are.

We are, in effect, saying, “I am going to be happy

right now.

I’m not going to put it off.”

That is surrender to your joy, your living Life while here, and to your journey on task and on purpose, filling every one of your pennies of time with the light you are here to give this world.

May you accept your prize today:

A day full of joy, of peace on your journey, and of good — really good — Work that is yours to do in this moment of your Life-time.

Blessings!

Life Lessons, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross and David Kessler, Simon and Schuster, 2000.

“As courage”

I was blessed with these departing words — ‘As courage,’ as in the verb avoir in the tu form in French, have, and means in this case ‘take or have courage’ — a little under a decade ago by a lovely older woman, a much beloved mom of my friend.  She knew a bit about what she bid me to take as we departed company that day — “Have courage”  — as she’d done work with the French Resistance as a teen in her native France and she’d raised two girls on her own as a mother who’d been left by a husband and father when her children were very young. She knew what it was to have courage, to take courage, and she said this to me as I was facing the beginning of some challenging times in my own life-time here.

 “As courage, …”

I took the words to heart; the encouragement brought to mind a model of grace and fortitude I would attempt as I faced the coming storms buffeting my own home and family at the time. And I knew the phrase to mean both to “take heart” and “to have courage”, especially when used as a phrase when departing, as she intended.

 

What I didn’t know till this week was how the now-superstar “researcher-storyteller” Brené Brown described courage.  (TED talk here; (yes, I’m behind cultural times apparently, as her star flashed over a year ago.)

In one of its earliest forms, the word courage literally had a very different definition than it does today.

 

Courage originally meant

“To speak one’s mind by telling all one’s heart.” . . .

 

What else are we to do but “to tell all one’s heart” when creating our Work, when being people who live our work and work our lives On Task and On Purpose?

I’ve anguished often over how smarmy my book is. As a journalist who was trained to ‘tell the story like it was’ in national media and to do that  required a good cynicism (notice I didn’t say healthy) toward all aspects of the story I was covering, my offering a book that is encouraging you to be  honestly who you are and to create the work ‘only you can do’ has often felt like I’ve donned an angel sweatshirt and grin absurdly. Indeed much of the response I received from others while writing it — the ones who were able to talk rather than choke on their snort and scoff as I told them about it— was that such an idea, that we each have work that only we can do, was preposterous.

 

I noted silently that these early responses came from those who at best endured what they were doing with their life-time, but felt they couldn’t quit as they ‘needed the money.’ That most of these folks were well into the 7 figure salaries told me they were fearful and trapped; what if… was a dangerous question to them, even though “doing one’s Work here” doesn’t mean necessary impoverishment.

 

So to see Ms. Brown’s amazing TED talk — even belatedly — brings tears to my eyes.

Have courage.

Yes, do have the courage to tell all of your heart.

Have courage to do that which combines your heart’s telling with your talents, your skills, your passion, your soul, in the service of that which you care about.

 

Have the courage to be You, shining in this world, On Task and On Purpose.

And if you don’t know what that is, have the courage to go on a journey of discovery.

I woulld love it if I – and/or the little questions in my book —  would give you a good start.

Blessings on whatever you do with your day today; may it involve the telling of all of your heart in some way.

Elizabeth Darby

 

PS there’s another little reflection on what it is to have courage at my other blog: Earth: Sacred/Possession, too.

Wanted

Last week, I was sitting in a library in the middle of Wales. It had wifi, free, and was the only place in town that did. I felt free, too. Life there was as when I left my full-time journalism career; there are places one can just be, as one is, living a day for a day’s worth of the miracle of life itself.

But in the library, tucked away at a back-table, and yes, using wifi to check my email for notice of familial needs or disasters (yes, I note the irony) I heard a man come in to ask the gentleman-librarian if he could use the library’s only computer. He was looking for work. Desperately looking for work, from the tone of his voice and the words between them. The conversation went something like this:

 

“Here’s an ad for a private chef. . . . Do you think they’d hire me . . . ?”

 

“Well,” started the Librarian encouragingly, but the man cut him off.

 

“I’ve some experience in that — I’ve cooked here and there. . . .”. He sounded frightened. “Do you think that would be enough?”

 

“Well,” said the Librarian again encouragingly, “it sounds like good work!  I would like to do something like that — be a chef. I cook . . . too . . .”. His voice dropped off into a bit of wistfulness.

 

“But do you think they’d want me,” asked the man. . . .

 

At this point, I nearly cried, both in compassion for both men in their early-forties, clearly wanting to be wanted by their work, but as well at the yearning in each of their voices:

Each wanted to feel to be valued for what he did with his time of his life.

One wanted to be wanted; any work would do but please hire him, now, I prayed.

The other would love doing something other than reminding 10-year-old boys that they needed parents’ permission to use one of the two computers available, which happened 3 times in the 1 hour I was there.

 

No, I didn’t stand up and say what my book — and I — fairly shouts at people:

 

You have a reason to be here on Earth…

It is to use your unique talents and specific abilities

in service of that which you care about in this world.

Your Life-time spent here,

doing the Work you are here to do,

 is needed.

Only you can do it!

 

It’s time to Create Your Work.

 

But I wanted to.

 

I wanted to take them both to the table and ask what each loved to do as a child and affirm that that joy is their path in this world even now.

 

I wanted to ask each what they could spend hours looking at, and what secret mission they felt they were on here,

during their lifetimes.

 

I wanted to remind each that he was not perfect at anything except at being himself, using his talents and gifts, passion and focus in service of that which he cares about — and thus each was perfectly able to create his own work that would support him all his days by being his best, shining self.

 

I sat, heart-pounding, wondering what to do next . . .

 

Instead, the seeker, encouraged to give it one more go by the gentle nudge he’d received from the librarian, dashed out to make an enquiring call before someone else took the cook position. And the Librarian announced to me (only me left in the two-room library) that it was time for lunch and he was “kicking me out” in 3 minutes. As we left, I watched him saunter shyly down the block, looking randomly in shop windows, and heading to the local market for a quick something.

 

I felt I’d been shown the light, as well as the door, as I stumbled out into the fair and beautiful day in this lovely small village where it seemed everyone knew and cared for others’ welfare.

I yearn to speak to people like this, in these small, out of the way places where hope and desperation so often dance hand in hand and a sense of dissatisfaction with one’s lot hides behind ‘any good job’ which is better than no job at all, of course. Of course it is, until one day one is still missing the feeling of being vital to one’s Purpose and Task here in the time one has on Earth.

These fellows are not people who attend seminars at a fancy hotel as so many self-help lecturers offer, but they are just like those who can and would do attend one to nurture themselves. These lovely people are also souls wanting to know the work they do with their life-time is needed and vital, and something each can contribute to this world. They, too, would like to know that they have what they need to create their own work; to live Life On Task and On Purpose, in the joy that brings to each day, and how to do that.

 

This is what I like to offer. It’s best in person, but sometimes a book of questions will have to do. If it’s accompanied by a friend or co-seeker, all the better.

 

Whose job is it to nurture vocation?

Is it a job-hire agency, where any work is better than none and pursue what you can?

Is it the work of the church to offer more than a few days’ course each year on what one’s vocation really feels and looks like? And if so, does it reach those needing to feel wanted or vital, or living through the quiet desperation looking for one’s Work  the rest of the year?

Should it be offered in schools, as a course, along with Life-skills 101 including banking, balance statements, and parenting skills?

 

I feel discovering the Work that puts each of us On Task and On Purpose is so important it belongs in all of the above, and maybe even as a free-table at the local Pub.

 

The point is this: such work of discovery has no season but rather is the beginning of your journey, wherever you are in life at this moment.

Yes, every moment is a “here you begin” moment to embrace your unique talents and passion, and to connect with the light and vitalness felt when shining from within combines with one’s sense of being needed on Earth here and now — i.e. having a purpose, and a mission-should-you-decide-to-accept-it — is lived. 

 

I can do this with your help: we can do this together.

 

Gather with friends and go through the book. Email me with questions.

Set up groups that can be tailored to fit anyone in need of encouragement and hope in your community.

Remember too that any  workshops I offer are one-for-one. Put together a workshop in your town or village with ten to twenty others, and we’ll make sure we offer another — together — at very-very-little-cost*  using the book as a living, exploratory process.

 

We all live in a moment of being authentic and our work and value needed in this world. It’s right now.

 And there is someone very near you — right now — wondering if he or she is wanted or his/her energy and passion needed on a mission in life.

Here You Begin, and help the person next to you do so as well…

 Together we can nurture a world of souls shining On Task and On Purpose. Wouldn’t that be a lovely place to live? Heaven on Earth.

Blessings,

Elizabeth Darby

 

*Low-low cost: enough to feel committed; cheap enough to attend when $1/Eu1/£1 is the difference between having lunch or paying rent and pay-what-you-can is the welcoming possibility to discover one’s Life-time OTOP mission.

Be Totally Honest With Yourself . . .

“Be totally honest with yourself: What makes you happy — do that.

And be prepared for it to take a little bit of time. . . .

  . . . Get a good foundation, learn all you can …

I became an expert in me when I started out in life, and I had seven potential journeys

in front of me to choose from that I mapped out on a spreadsheet.  

I thought I was motivated by doing a good job for others.

But after a few months of trying this, I realized I was motivated by being happy,

and that I’m happy when I’m doing a good job, and bringing happiness to others.

People would look at me and say, ‘Look at all the money you made . . .’.

They didn’t know about all the deals that didn’t happen…. 

When I started out, after looking at all the options, I burned the ships, like the explorers did —

I said this was it, and I was going to make this work.

And I was very lucky. . . .”

The man speaking is older, gray in the hair that is left, spending a bit of his Life-Time in a cafe to mentor a 30-something in her decision whether to use her time, skills and talent at … Real Estate.

Maybe it’s not a likely first-idea of a perfectly “spiritual” career, and the question wasn’t whether Real Estate was the reason she or even he is on this earth, spending Life-Time On Task and On Purpose. He could have been offering his wisdom on any journey she asked about, for obviously his advice is about how to live life, not necessarily what to do with it.  Especially when he returned to advising her to, above all else, be happy in her living and in her choice of how to spend her Life-Time.

His advice is sage and learned in the day-to-day moments of his Life-time here. As he walks out in what appear to be simple khakis, simple white shirt and Orvis straw hat, and then doffing a beautiful sport jacket in a cut of cloth that emanates quality and worth, he reminds her to get her ticket validated to save the parking fee… as she’s ‘a nice person, after all’ so why waste a dime?

This is what it’s all about, isn’t it?

Choosing to work at stirring happiness into a job well-done, rather than focus on just the ‘results’. Choosing to learn about You, to seek to know what is the best of you and to apply it to your journey(s) ahead. To choose whatever role to play that makes you happy and tugs at you to do your best each moment.

In a multiple role life, as we each live every moment of life, this is the Way, I feel. We must get out of our own way to let a bright light shine fully from within, as we each —yes even you — are here to do. Whether the role of this moment in your life is care-giver, seeker, provider, creator, assistant, hand-holder, or ace deal-maker or lonely-in-the-night guardian, it’s your journey using your Life-Time.

So, as the wise man says:

Be totally honest with yourself  . . .  

 

What makes you happy — do that.

 

 And be prepared for it to take a little bit of time.

Here You Begin: On Task and On Purpose. Right . . . Now.

And Right . . . Now. . . . 

And Right . . . Now.

It’s always a Begin Here moment in which to shine. And it’s going to take a little time for that shine to become a natural habit.

But when it does, oh my is it beautiful and successful. 

For who can resist someone who is happy in what they do with their time, every moment?

Blessings on your day!

Elizabeth Darby