No matter what you choose as a career, business, vocation or life’s work, you are always self-employed. You choose where and how to spend your hours and days; if you’re unhappy, unfulfilled, unproductive or bored—or doing it just for the money—you’re choosing to squander your creative power, and thus your capacity to be of service.
That’s not to say that wherever you are, you can’t learn something new, pick up a new skill, or discover an asset of yours that’s been lying dormant. Sometimes shitty situations are revelations and personal revolutions in disguise.
On another level, all we choose to put our minds and hands to in this life is employing the self. Add stress, anger and frustration, and it’ll quickly exhaust you. Add levity, curiosity and gratitude, and you’ll far more likely remain bright-eyed until the end. Choose not to show up, and you’re left with regret, guilt, or wondering if you may have missed out.
We all have our art and a reason to be. What’s common these days is some grand “find your purpose” meme that’s got a lot of us spinning around confused and uncertain — or worse, feeling guilty and ashamed. We’ve come close to making dogmatic the utterly simple and natural process of self-discovery; you’re here to be you! That’s it. That’s enough; your version of perfection that’s moving toward completion. What you need to let go of is the idea that you were born incomplete, lacking or wanting. All of that ancestral, dogmatic, post-industrialist noise is simply bullshit.
Some of us have big plans and aspirations. Some may become megastars on stage or screen, enthralling and entertaining millions. Some may become excellent doormen, offering a friendly face, and a safe space for guests and tenants to rely upon. Neither is “better” or more valued universally. YOU are the gift and can’t know how your actions, big or small, ripple out into the collective—nor do you need to. Just keep creating. Just be the real you.
Play! Play with what moves you. Try everything. Use your feelings and body’s messages and energetics to guide you. Ask for help. Explore the myriad methods and techniques and mysteries to seek and discover aspects of your truth. Everything presented as an opportunity is merely a permission slip. Everything is at your disposal.
The creative child that is forced to “grow up” is forced away from their inbuilt guidance, and is thus inculcated to employ concepts of self (and the world) counter to what they know without question in their heart — even before they learn to speak our language. We’re not born with fear, violence and judgment.
How many of us have felt since we were quite young that something isn’t right about how we’re going about things here—that it doesn’t have to be this way? Further to that, how would we even know we were living in a caring, loving, harmonious world? Conflict and contrast are the norm, today. They’re excellent tools, but they’re shitty rules.
Love and unity aren’t the exception. They’re our natural state and an inevitable homeostasis should we create a space within which we can be guided back toward them.
It begins by employing your self in silence.
“I think silence is one of the greatest gifts that we have.” ~ Fred Rogers
Solvitur ambulando