What Makes You Come Alive?
This week a friend of mine sent an email with the following quote by Howard Thurman: “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do that.” Nailed it! That was what I needed to hear. And if I wasn’t listening, today I stumbled on a blog post with the same quote. Clearly, I am meant to heed this message.
You see, there’s an awful lot going on right now that is everything but lifegiving. So much heartache and news of destruction, from the terrible devastation of Gaza and the Ukraine, to situations in Africa and our country. If you ask what the world needs … wow! So much. In the face of so many needs, what can I do? But if you ask what makes you come alive, well I know exactly what does that for me – writing.
Needs Versus What Makes You Come Alive
In the past, when I have thought about what the world needs, I would question the time I spent writing. Surely my time would be better spent on caring for the poor and homeless in my community. How can I justify doing something that I love? Spending hours creating characters, living with those characters in my head as the plot thickens until the final denouement. I’m having way too much fun!
And yet that is precisely what makes me come alive.
What makes you come alive? It may seem like such a simple question. Certainly, you know the answer, or do you? There are many things that can interfere with knowing that which truly makes you come alive. Addictions interfere with your ability to come alive. And abuse. Abuse tells you what you need and feel doesn’t matter. Over time you can lose the ability to know what you need or feel. To know what makes you come alive, you have to know yourself, your one true self, not the image you present to the world, the image you hide behind.
Intersection Between What the World Needs and What Makes You Come Alive.
Maybe what makes you come alive, is precisely what the world needs right now. Maybe in some small way, your happiness is not at the cost of human suffering, but a way to relieve suffering.
We aren’t talking about abusing others or the world. If amassing large sums of money at the cost of your employees or the environment is what you claim makes you come alive, I would challenge this. Are you truly alive or hiding from your life? Is it a form of addiction, addiction to power and greed, that numbs you to the true joys of life?
The state of the world and our country has been heavy on my mind for months. For some reason, the fate of the people of Ukraine have especially weighed on my mind, ever since hearing an American-Ukrainian speak at a writing festival a year ago and reading her book. I know that the situation in Gaza is equally heart-rending, but for some reason, this is the one that touches me the most.
The end result? Seemingly out of nowhere, out of the blue, I have found myself constructing a book, possibly a trilogy, with characters and a setting somewhat resembling the Ukraine. It seems God calls me through my heart, through what makes me come alive. And now, after a pause from fiction writing, I am back at it.
Maybe what the world needs are my words. Don’t know. I just know that it is what makes me come alive at this moment in my life.
What Makes You Come Alive?
As Irenaeus said so many centuries ago, “The glory of God is the human person fully alive.” Maybe what we need now is, not zombies – walking dead going through the motions of living – but more people who are fully alive, showering God’s glory on the world.
What about you? What makes you come alive?
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