I can’t count on mine nor one hundred others ten fingers and toes the number of people met who are openly aware of a hidden desire to locate their purpose. Walk, walk, walk, talk, dream, talk and nearly everyone demands to be shown a giant colorful light during an unexpected turn and through that brightness there shall be loud sirens and horns signaling the arrival of every reason behind the way it all turned out the way it did.
Banks, writers, musicians and magicians, the Stock Market, TJ Max and Wal-Mart love your addiction…I mean passion to scrape from the edges of reality a mysterious white line of somethingness that’s consumed like chocolate truffles when exposed.
Your purpose can be your job, having lunch hunger pains at 9:30 am, making sure your kids got to school on time, racing home to catch the latest guests on Ellen and Oprah. Right now my purpose is to sit inside a completely frozen studio on a tall radio station production room chair with my feet dangling off the side nearing total numbness because my butt refuses to share the blood supply.
Do you understand where I’m going with this?
I’m totally guilty of landing too much energy in the future and not saving an ounce for this present delivery of breath. This mind, body and soul are sickened by the idea that no matter how much heart I put into Tae Kwon Do and how hard I worked at perfecting each form and defense, the organ elected to vacate the premises in July leaving my 3rd Degree Black Belt dreams on a long deserted highway resting next to an opossum whose only need was to get his rounded rump across the road.
We spend so much time focused on reaching a particular point that getting there ends up being a left turn at the tracks, go three miles and turn left before going right only to stop, spin six circles without getting dizzy then hit the gas to pull off a Dukes of Hazard leap over a creek that didn’t exist two seconds ago.
Purpose is what we’re delivered on the inside then spend the rest of your living years trying to turn into something you can touch.
Almost losing my father three weeks ago opened my eyes, it’s become important to those who surround him to simply ask, “Has this man of eighty plus years been given air to complete whatever circles he created?” Like most men dressed up in adult clothes the only thing any father truly wants is happiness and true love for his wife and children. After all the teenage wars, young adult challenges and midlife struggles, my sister Susan noticed something my father would never call his purpose but to her the message came through loud and clear, “You wouldn’t believe how much Mom and Dad love each other. I love watching them be in love.”
Such a presentation sent me to the pages of Eckhart Tolle whose written thousands of pages on these unrecognized purposes billions of us chase hourly, “A purpose is what you are doing right now. If you get up and walk to the door to fetch a hot cup of Joe, you have been given a new purpose.”
Wait! Stop! What about the giant picture? There’s got to be more about life than just living in the moment!
I will forever believe how I reacted at Mercy South at the announcement of my body shutting down has governed the thought process of how I attack each sunrise. My reaction was a big beautiful, “Merry Christmas!” For some stinking reason for nearly twenty five years I’ve ripped at the torn edges of everyday culture spouting, “I don’t do Christmas on one day…I celebrate it everyday!” Never realizing that one day shouting it at the top of my lungs during a heart attack that it would send this system into a performance mode that would build a path into a forest I didn’t recognize only to hear my doctor this past Thursday vibrantly say, “You’ve been given a mulligan. You went against our orders to not do pushups. You didn’t listen when we said no Tae Kwon Do for a year or longer and yet today as I sit here looking at your charts and other doctors notes knowing your heart has returned to 100% performance without any sign of scar tissue. You can’t tell anywhere on this machine that something went horribly wrong not even five months ago.”
Being aware of your being is the purpose. Putting faith in a future you might never touch is like getting beamed up or down to a planet on Star Trek. What is the likelihood of that materializing? How many decisions have been made on your journey toward tomorrow that have reached back and bitten you with a giant poisoned dose of deception?
One of my favorite people in the world is Viva Doc Vegas...his imagination is endless and he has no fear of bringing it to life in the present. His level of confidence is earth shattering because he knows in the end, he did what he wanted most in life...to be happy being nobody but himself.
A desire to excel, win and succeed is achieved in the right now. It might not be a six figure paycheck or a brilliantly designed twelve bedroom home in a ritzy side of town but nothing inspires the tummy more than something new on the dollar menu at McDonalds.
You hear the great masters of martial arts and many spiritual leaders speak of living a life of alignment all the time—being the kid who sat in the back of the church trying to squish my brothers fingers in the hymnal, I didn’t get it, so it didn’t seem important to digest. Once I became an adult it was like...oh oh I think I missed something along the way!
Being aware of your being is nothing more than taking an outside snap shot of your present moment: I’m currently sitting on this giant radio station studio chair with my big fat chin resting in the palm of my hand reading and rereading every sentence written and there’s still going to be an area where the minds eye didn’t catch a misspelled word, out of place sentence or for that matter a message you can relate with. I don’t try to make things perfect because there are too many trees that lean in a pristine forest of trees.
Alignment of your primary purpose begins with thinking and awareness. Get your mind off the clock and calendar and stop measuring the distance you’ve traveled. I’m not a fan of the month of January…the most commonly heard thing, “I’ve lost 22.6 pounds in three weeks!” By February the diet plan is over because that’s all you wanted to reach never realizing that dieting is a way of life and it must remain part of your written pages every day. We slip off the wagon because we’ve been given permission to seek a new purpose.
Honestly, I could speak for hours on the rebuilding of the thought process. My first wife lived by one rule, “If I don’t see it in front of me at this very moment…it doesn’t nor did it ever exist.”
Hmmm…maybe she was onto something but didn’t know how to use it by way of turning it into a positive. Being aware of you is the purpose.
Getting back to living…steal my art.
arroecollins@clearchannel.com
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