Writing

Still and again the question so often on my mind is whether and when I will find something I can do that others actually want me to do. When will my gifts align with the demands and desires of the times? Will I ever understand the purpose for me? Is it so simple to do what I do with the hours of each day without the weight of the why making heavy the day?

If I write something each day, will the product  be worth the price I pay in lost sleep and frustration? Will I get better or worse if I force words to the page? Does the act of writing improve the art of writing?

I read the words of those long dead whose pens did carve the page, and I wonder what thoughts of mine will last beyond my breath if I don't share them while I breathe. All I can do is write what comes to me and wait to see what comes of it.

Noticing Matters

I am often distracted, even consumed by a desire to do something useful, meaningful, something grand by which to be remembered. It is not that I have grand ideas I want to implement for the benefit of mankind, but rather that I want to be one who has such ideas. It is not about the ideas, but rather about my desire to matter in some way to this existence.

Perhaps the problem is I am trying to define my usefulness. We all want to matter and to know we matter. In the vastness that makes us all insignificant, we long to be significant to someone, to matter somehow. We don’t want our existence to go unnoticed.

Perhaps in truth this life is not about the grand things we do or don’t do. Perhaps this life is about the sum of all the little things we do every day.

When I cross paths with someone, that interaction is all that matters in that moment. We all have different experiences, different stories to tell. Whatever I see or don’t see, feel or don’t feel, taste or don’t taste, smell or don’t smell, hear or don’t hear, whatever I experience in that moment becomes my story. Whatever else I have or have not done does not define that interaction. Whatever I give or take in that moment speaks on its own to that person.

We all want to have good stories to tell, stories to which others will listen and affirm as worthy of hearing. Perhaps love is noticing those around you and making them matter to you. When we notice, we give life. To ignore is to take life.

Eyes Full of Empty Hearts

Our hands are never empty. 

Our eyes are ever filled with images 

that claim our lives are not what they could be. 

But images are fantasies of lives that don't exist, 

of happiness hiding in places it does not exist. 

We fill our hands and eyes with emptiness 

and wonder why we don't find happiness.

Wondering

A flower's beauty lasts but a moment, just long enough to convince passing birds or insects to collect and spread its pollen.  There is purpose in beauty and beauty in purpose, but the flower itself is unaware of both.  It does what it was made to do, what it was intentionally and purposefully designed to do.

Will anyone notice its beauty?  Will the pollen it shares be put to good use?  Will it do what it is supposed to do before it fades and withers? These are questions it does not ask.  It does not wonder why it exists or what it should do.  No, it wonders at the morning dew that quenches its thirst, at the warm sun towards which it opens and reaches, and at the rich dark soil on which it feeds.

The flower lives in wonder at all the ways in which the Creator gives it life, and it is but one such creature thus sustained.  Perhaps I will find more purpose in this life by wondering that I exist rather than wondering why I exist.  Life is proof of purpose, mysterious though that purpose may be.