It borders cliché, and is potentially also a vast understatement – but I’ve been learning of late that it’s so important to do what you love. Obvious, yes. Prioritised? No. I’m finding that oft’ the most seemingly simple things in life are the easiest to overlook. It’s not until you make an incidental change or addition that suddenly really impacts you that the penny drops, and you realise you've gone and accidentally changed your own life.
When I say 'doing what you love' I'm not necessarily speaking of 'doing' in just a career context, either. Recently I’ve found that a few relatively minute changes in my daily routine have had a massive impact on my general outlook on the world. Some of them have been small: the discovery of the perfect decaffeinated vanilla chai tea that I now drink every night religiously - it makes everything seem right with the universe. Some of them have seemed bigger: forcing myself to write. (Blog posts. Regularly. Ish.) But all of them have added greatly to my general happiness. Why is that? Well, because little things make you happy – ask any impulse shopper. Whether we mean to or not, we create the atmospheres of our worlds out of little, everyday things - events, interactions with others, quirky obsessions, interests, a new song on repeat, more caffeine. The 'everyday', and how we shape it, is of paramount importance. And the reality is that in the midst of the chaos, when the 'busy' card is too often played, the things we truly love doing are the first things to be squeezed out of the picture. In a classic case of the urgent versus the important - the urgent wins. And so life becomes a dizzying haze of urgent stuff, and less crafted intentionally to include the things that make us 'come alive'.
One of my favourite quotes talks about this. I will paste this quote at the end, in aid of being helpful. My challenge to me, to us, to everyone... and especially to those to whom life has lost its spark, is - what do you love? What makes you feel most yourself? Why are you not doing these things more? How could you find time to prioritise them? Slash, is it time for you to in fact discover what these things are? Ask yourself the seemingly obvious. You'll be better for it. And if you happen to find me in a park one day with Pride & Prejudice in one hand, a journal in the other, and a chai tea perched precariously in the midst of them when I should be doing laundry - you'll know why.
“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs – ask yourself what makes you come alive, and then go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” – Howard Thurman
The most thought-provoking and inspiring post Jaimee. My most favourite quote relates to this philosophy and is a fitting addition, I believe, to the spirit of this post.
ReplyDelete"No man ever followed his genius till it misled him. Though the result weakness, yet perhaps no one can say that the consequences were to be regretted, for these were a life in conformity to higher principles if the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal, - that is your success. All nature is your congratulation and you have cause momentarily to bless yourself. The greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated. We easily come to doubt if they exist. We soon forget them. They are the highest reality. The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little stardust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched." -
Henry David Thoreau