The Director
I know how hard I have worked to try to be different people in my life, and I know how often it has felt like what I was doing was nothing more than an act.
I'm not sure whose entertainment it was for, but it sure as hell wasn't mine.
I don't know why you have to become all the wrong people to become the right one.
Something masochistic in the DNA of the universe?
Bad luck?
Piss poor planning?
A little of all three, probably.
But what if each person was the right person for the right time?
I love this idea too, because…and it's important we remember this, we right now in the present moment have the benefit of hindsight.
Crystal clarity, like a pool on a sunny morning.
We saw the movie.
We acted in every scene.
And if we look closely, we are going to see something fascinating.
At every one of those choke points, we consciously decided to become that person that we became, for good or bad, exceptional or awful. That's because, at that moment, that was precisely what we, as the Director of this sweeping human drama, chose to do.
We went to a specific university because there was something there we wanted. We took a particular job because, at the time, it was what we wanted and possibly needed. It's easy to look back and say that we made the wrong choice, but in the moment, we had something we wanted…and we took it.
Today is no different.
There's a move that you're looking at in your life.
There's a move I'm looking at in my own life.
If I don't make that choice, in either sense, I am becoming who I have chosen to be.
I.
Me.
No one else.
I have the final say as the Director of the film.
You are in the same boat.
If I'm focused on the dream of who I want to become, I may need (and very likely WILL need) to walk a complex and disjointed route to get there.
There are a lot of things to be done before I can become what I want.
The only true thing left for us to do is to do everything in our power to make sure we select the thing that our heart is telling us to do right NOW.
In this moment.
NOT yesterday's heart.
NOT tomorrow's heart.
Today's heart.
It wants something, and it's trying to be very clear about it.
It's not mincing words.
You're looking around for a sign that something should happen, your head spinning wildly around you, scanning the world for a clue, while your heart is screaming at you to be heard!
It's telling you the answer, and you keep trying to confuse it with a different question.
It is telling you who to become.
You are telling it, "Pipe down. I'm trying to find the answer."
You've got it covered.
"Thanks for the answer, heart, but I'm going to pass on it."
So the heart caves again, disappointed in the knowledge that you decided not to listen to it again, like an employee who never gets a say, and finally stops offering up ideas to better the company. Sleep well during that next iteration, content in the knowledge that you could have skipped the next three life lessons if you had just listened to your intuition in the first place.
We want to listen to the head.
The head is there for our protection.
The heart is there for our passion.
Spoiler alert: The world is in a passion deficit.
Passion is priceless.
Why?
Because there's so little of it.
Employers will pay through the nose to find it, because if people have it, they will give everything of themselves to keep it.
It's the ultimate drug.
The unbreakable addiction.
Protection and safety are cheap today because they are pervasive.
It's a supply and demand problem.
We have an oversupply of safety and sterility.
We have a dearth of excitement, inspiration, and passion.
My wish for you at this moment is that you, in the words of the late great Jimmy Buffett, "forget that blind ambition, and learn to trust your intuition, plowing straight ahead, come what may."
EO- Live a Life Worth Watching
