I realized this morning on my short drive to the office that communication is actually a big part of how I feel alive.
Back in the day, even at the height of my singer/songwriter music performer career, I would have never called myself a prolific songwriter. And now, I write a LOT, and do a ton of graphic design, but I wouldn't call myself a prolific writer or designer.
But today, it suddenly became clear to me that I am a rather prolific communicator. In some fashion, I am always producing some form of communication.
The reason for that, at least in part, is probably because when I feel/hear/think/realize something, in a strange sense it doesn't become REAL for me until I've shared it. I may do that through a song, a piece of visual art or graphic design, a website, a book, or this blog, but until I've passed it along, I'm not actually sure it happened.
To a large degree, I seem to absorb reality by communicating it.
Strange, I know, but it probably has something to do with my StrengthsFinder Communication Theme... can anybody else relate?
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Over the past six weeks, I have being doing the Body For Life program, in a highly overdue project to regain my physical fitness. I was hungrily looking forward to gaining something that resembles pectoral muscles, and maybe develop "abs," instead of my former, singular "ab."
But, man, this process takes way longer than I thought.
Of course, the lack of seeing the results that I want to see doesn't diminish the glimpses of progress I occasionally do witness, usually the morning after I get back from working the upper body, when my muscles have a little more blood pumping through them. I hear we males have this "issue" anyway, where we look in the mirror and almost always think that we're pretty much the bomb-dot-com. I don't know why that is -- maybe it's physiological, or some kind of DSM-IV category -- but suffice to say that I rarely have a less-than-glowing review of my reflection ready to print.
Kinda full of myself, I guess.
I'd never really thought about that phrase before this morning: "full of myself". I mean, really thought about it. But this morning, for whatever reason, I was keenly aware that I was entirely full of myself, in the "no room for anything else" sense.
And that bothered me.
I don't want to be so crowded with myself that I cannot even find room for others in my margins. I don't want my world to be filled with clones of me. I don't want my bus to be standing room only. I don't want to be filled to the brim of nothing but me, me, me.
I want to be able to give, generously and passionately.
But who would even want what I have to give? Someone I consider to be very wise once said that we do and say is actually just a reflection, an extension, of what's going on inside us. So, if that's the case, who's going to want more of me: sick and ugly and only taken with, well, me?
I'm fairly certain that swallowing too much narcissism will make us throw up; maybe a little regurgitation is exactly what I need. Maybe I can fill up on something else.
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The most brilliant minds on the planet will tell you that the universe is expanding. We invent telescopes and we create science fiction to "boldly go where no one has gone before," but we never really reach the edges or the explanations.
Erwin McManus suggests that the space inside each person is even more vast and complicated. From his latest book, Soul Cravings:
"There is as much mystery inside as there is outside -- maybe more. If you look carefully inside people, you'll find both luminaries and black holes. And if you choose to walk with someone for a lifetime, you'll find that no matter how well you know him or her, there's still so much you don't know. [Unfortunately], some people seem to live in a very small universe. Their world has room only for themselves. While their souls have every potential to be ever expanding, they seem instead to be the center of a collapsing universe -- no room for dreams, for hope, for laughter, for love, for others -- room only for themselves."I desperately want to work with Luminaries, and I am making it my goal to un-surrounded myself of the Black Holes who have no desire to ever become Stars. Individuals who strive to absorb the sun from everyone else on their path to obscurity are not welcome here; life is just too short. I need the light. //