Live on Purpose!

I made up my mind a few years ago to live on purpose. For me, that meant two things: 1) to harness the power of intentionality.... that is, make deliberate effort towards achieving desired goals and 2) to find my life's purpose and live it. I have not, for one moment, regretted that decision. But as you would imagine the choice did not come without its costs - opportunity costs as well as economic costs. And there have been times when I have wished my circumstances were different, but if truth be told if I had my life to live over again I would still choose to walk the road I now walk, to bear the pain on the way to the gain...to endure what sometimes feels like indignity on the alter of vulnerability...but hey, I've come to see it's all a part of the process, and I'm owning it.

 Living on purpose is about discovering and re-discovering day by day the value you were created to add; the difference you make, as only you can.....and making that difference day by day. It's not about being exceptional...too many people make that mistake and hold back on their contribution to life simply because they look in the mirror and see 'ordinary' staring back at them. Welcome to the club. Ordinary is what most of us are. Extra-ordinary has not been bestowed on too many of us. And let's get this straight: those who do eventually get to extra-ordinary usually start right where you are. So there's not telling how things will go...you just need to be willing to start at ordinary.

I have long given up on the idea of trying to help people find what their purpose is. I don't know that I can ever do that. I've heard it said, you've found your purpose when you've found something to do that you could easily get lost in, something you never get tired of, something you do that you always get complimented on.  Friend, I don't know that there is a formula for helping you find it, or what that formula is, if it exists...but I know that you can make up your mind to add value to room, a situation, to create improvement, bring about increase....to pour into the lives of others, and to be able to do so without a desire for personal gain being foremost in your mind....and that would be enough. It would be enough that. It would be enough that you used your talents and gifts, your personal interests and invested your time in the pursuit of your own growth, and that your growth redounded to the benefit of others...

Living on purpose is never about making an impression. It's always only about making a difference...It's about making up your mind to find a worthy object of your attention. It may be a person, an environmental issue...a cause bigger than yourself.....and pouring out yourself ..over and over again. There's nothing quite like it. Live on purpose!

I love Words...

I find I am fascinated by words.  By what is said, by the way they are said, by the way they make you think and feel, by the the way certain combinations resonate and leave impressions on your soul that nothing else has the power to. Whoever said 'a picture is worth a thousand words' never really understood the potency of words. Have you ever wondered, for example, why the book is always better than the movie? I love words like some people love music. For me, music is simply poetry in motion; the cinema or theatre a chance for words to take center-stage, right where they belong.  Maybe that's why I have always hated small talk. It's a tragic waste of words.

And some people have a way with them. They know how to make words dance across a page, to create a symphony of sounds, to bring to bear the creativity of the imagination. To motivate. To inspire. Words have longevity. They stand the test of time. Things said eons ago remain in the back of our minds, securely stored in the crevices of our hearts becoming the driving force of our lives, the source of our power, the purpose of our existence. Words uttered by obscure human beings, once in the darkness of oblivion, have propelled them to the forefront of movements today that are larger than the lives they ever dared to imagine for themselves. I think often of the words of Abraham Lincoln's mother as she is said to have uttered on her death bed..."Be somebody, Abe. Be somebody." One life so inspired, went on to inspire a nation. Oh, the power of words to inspire, to regenerate, to create.

Today we have millions of words bundled into quotable quotes that continue to inspire millions of people to action. Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech brings into sharp focus the plausibility and possibility of a mere trifling notion. Philosophies expressed thousands of years ago by men of varying literary abilities still cause us to reflect deeply upon the issues of life, to pause to ponder the substantive, to consider their life-changing and life-giving nature. Fortunately for us, words never got in the way of these men saying what needed to be said.

 But think not for a moment that I contemplate the matter of the power of words merely as a one-sided affair. For whether we accept this as truth or not, in the same way that words have the power to create and re-create they have the power to demotivate, to hurt, to destroy to kill. Many a dream has died at the tip of a naysayer's tongue. Many relationships have ended because of words laid carelessly on the altar of unrequited love. Recognizing, therefore, the power of words to inspire or demotivate, to create or kill, I choose life. I choose everyday, deliberately, to read words that are life-giving, to listen to words that inspire me to greatness....to aspire, to learn to speak words that have the power to call out the best in others and inspire those in my sphere of influence to speak and write and live like the existence and prosperity of future generations depend on it. I choose life!