I might be self focused enough to write a weekly blog, thinking that anyone might read it, I might have a title in a company, be a father, former husband, ‘pilotmotorcyclistcarbustruckboat’ and just about anything I can get my hands on to drive/float/fly type of guy but…I am just like you, just like everyone else, we all are practically the same. Don’t let anyone tell you different. .
When I was younger I didn’t know what it was I was looking for internally. I ‘thought’ I knew but in truth, I really didn’t. Now that I have gotten a little older, I realize I look for significance. At the end of my days, I don’t think it really matters to me if I am ‘known’ or ‘not’, but I think it matters that, well, my life mattered…I think it matters that your life mattered.
Things in life so easily get turned around sideways or backwards. I remember my dad telling me that a car’s air conditioner isn’t just blowing ‘cold’ air, it is removing the heat from the air. That seemed backwards to me but it’s true. We feel the the cold air blowing on our face and we ‘think’ we understand but we really don’t.
So many have striven to ‘make’ their lives matter. We read about them, worship them sometimes via sports, politics, news-readers, authors, radio personalities, etc…any public job where ‘you’ are in the lime light. It appears to me, and I could be wrong, (more often than not most likely) that most of us have at one time or another, struggled with ‘wanting’ to be famous because somehow, the clamor and noise of people chasing us, make us ‘think’ we matter.
At 49…I would say… “that is a lie”. I bet you would also.
But what is it? What really matters and what really makes a difference.
I had started a blog entry on flying not long ago. This has been one of my passions since I was a child. Hence, the book, “The Day I Learned to Fly” was bore out of this passion and desire. Why flying?
I got nothing, no idea, can’t tell you why. Just know it is…
So I flew for a few years during college and afterwards. Then I had ‘reasons’ that forced me to put it down. Those reasons took the better part of 24 years to deal with. For the first few years, I mourned every time a plane flew over. But as time went on, I moved on from feeling left out, to just ‘talking’ about flying till it dawned on me, I was a ‘has been’. Then I just stopped. I stopped everything. Talking about it, thinking about it or anything. I just stopped. I flew commercial for work but that was really it.
Elizabeth and I have talked about getting back in the air for years but I was never really sure it was going to happen. Then, one day in June of this year, I just decided…and did it. I shopped around for an instructor, met some great folks at Empire Aviation (Paul and Matt) at Henderson-Oxford (KHNZ) Airport and took my first flight in 24 years.
It was still there. I was able to take off, land and do the maneuvers he required of me. A few lessons down the road and I am flying again! Ye Ha!
But my point…
I think the reason I this comes naturally to me is –
It is a passion.
What looks like ‘work’ to others is fun and play to me, even when it is work.
So, I wonder, if the things we were organically, naturally, God given excited about became our life’s pursuit, could making a difference, finding significance, automatically occur. Some of us punch clocks, some of us work days and nights, some of us do 9 to 5 but, and I know this is a big but…
But what if you found what YOU were passionate about…and just went and did it? What would come out of that? I am not saying this is ‘the’ answer. Maybe it is just one of them but this I know. When you see someone doing something they ‘love’ you see it ‘permeate’ their being and they are joining something bigger than themselves.
I remember a line from ‘Chariots of Fire’. This story follows two men striving for medals in the 1924 Olympics. One runner, is a Missionary and his family doesn’t understand his need or desire to run. They think he should head out for the Mission Field right away. In trying to explain to them his reasons for running he says – “I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast. And when I run I feel His pleasure.”
I wish for each of you, everyday, that you feel, and know the purpose you were created for and His joy pours through the passions in your life.
That, my friends, is significant. (In my thinking)
I think living is pursuing your passion. Pursue your passion, not someone else’s or someone else’s idea’s…but your passion.
May your journey be full of peace this week.
One Response
Great blog and so very true! I heard passion described once as like a beach ball being pushed beneath the waves. If you deny it, it will surely come up again, just like the beach ball cannot stay beneath the water. Try as hard as you might to ignore it or push it away, it WILL resurface again. It is a God-given intentional part of who you were created to be… and there is only one you.