Hope is the thing with feathers. August 9, 2007
I’ve been thinking lately about purpose and passion.
About whether what we do defines us and if we have an obligation to choose a life and all its actions as if it does.
Largely, that question bellows out at work – an area over which it seems I am always struggling to find a balance.
I tend to see and sort things in polar piles. This is all good, that is all bad. The bad ought to make you jump ship immediately. And if it is good, well, you aren’t working nearly hard enough to honor it.
I’m not sure I’ve been able to pin down a palatable understanding of our purpose as it relates to work yet. It seems that if we love or thrive on a career too fervently, it tends to become a performance arena in which all but a façade of ourselves is lost.
On the other hand, isn’t there something morally distasteful about spending so much of yourself and your time contributing to a cause that doesn’t move you at all – or worse, repels you? Is defense of our self and our autonomy a good enough reason to just go through the motions?
But it is more than work, really. What do our financial decisions and spending habits say about us? My sister and I have been talking a lot lately about the idea of having a consumer footprint. Forget about carbon emissions – do I really want to leave a trail of needless, impulsive acquisitions behind me? What does that say about what I value? And what I don’t? What does it say about what I gather and why I keep it?
Of course I am held in this idealistic trance of minimalism only until I break in self preservation and lunge for a massage or a new shirt I don’t need or a $4 iced chai because it brings instant, quiet pleasure.
There has to be contentment in balance, I think.
Peace, balance and contentment must be the loveliest words in the world.
But they lack the fire of purpose and passion.
And I can’t decide which flame draws me to it more strongly.
* * *
The other day my travel companion made an offhanded comment about a trip we took this spring not really being blog worthy. It was an entirely innocent remark about a short, last minute holiday and yet I wholeheartedly disagreed – a new reaction I found both satisfying and convicting.
How many times have I rolled my internal eyes at luxurious trips or vacations to commercial sounding destinations? Written them and their travelers off because they weren’t edgy or adventurous or purposeful enough?
How shallow.
The most hopeful thought I have every day is that I am surrounded by beauty and joy and the exotic and overlooked mysteries no matter where I go. And I know that sounds so trite and Pollyana-ish. But if I can’t conjure excitement for the possibility of adventure in every day, I’m afraid I might miss it when it displays a bold and spectacular show somewhere down my literal and figurative road.
I’d rather be too delighted, too keen than to risk becoming jaded and miss it all.
So in celebration of adventures of all breeds, I give you far too many photos of lovely little domestic moments that are making me happy here and now, common treasures fully worth preserving and passing on…
