Week 1 - Stars, the Alchemist, and a Big Leap

 

In The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, a young shepherd named Santiago meets a strange old man who sends him on a quest to find the greatest treasure imaginable. Upon their first meeting, the old man tells him this:

"Everyone, when they are young, knows what their destiny is. At that point in their lives, everything is clear and everything is possible. They are not afraid to dream, and to yearn for everything they would like to see happen in their lives. But, as time passes, a mysterious force begins to convince them that it will be impossible for them to realize their destiny."

So it was with me. I have always known I was made for more than to wake up, go to work at a 9-5 desk job, and then come home, only to do it all over and over again until I retire or die -- but as a kid in America, we are taught that we grow up to produce, to work. We live and exist to earn money so that we can continue living and existing, and maybe a few lucky people earn enough money that they are able to do what they want to do, but mostly, you're just living an unremarkable life full of tedium and sometimes the occasional happiness or misery.

This is a principle I learned in church, in school, at home -- everyone, my whole life, has been telling me that life is just a collection of average days and average people. 

And so my whole life, I've felt like an absolute raving lunatic. Because that is simply not true at all, at least not for me -- and I believe, with the wisdom of only very little time and experience, that God fully intended me to be this way. I have always been blessed (or, depending on your outlook, blighted) by deeply passionate emotions that are so ingrained in my everyday experience that it's nearly impossible for me to differentiate my emotions from my personality. I also find deep contentment and pleasure at many pedestrian details of life, such as misty clouds enveloping the mountains or flowers blooming between sidewalk cracks or even a particularly good strawberry. And to me, that was always what life was supposed to be about -- proving the ordinary to be extraordinary, the mundane to be magical, the bland to be beautiful.

Reading this week's study materials actually made me cry, because for the first time in my life, I felt like someone was telling me that maybe, this way in which I am different from many others isn't me being crazy. It might be that God is calling me to live exactly the kind of life I feel drawn to -- that is, a life of showing others how stunning and extraordinary life can be if we're just looking for those tiny sparks of brilliance. It was spiritually affirming and comforting to me to be told that if I put in hard work, and I'm willing to dig really deep, I can create the kind of life I want, the kind of life that is simply full of meaning.

It was especially poignant to me right now as I'm trying to start up a photography business. Photography has been a massive help to me in expressing myself to others, and for a few years now I've felt drawn to using it as a means of providing for myself. 

And guess what? Reading the material about calculated risk-taking gave me courage to do something risky I've been thinking about for months. I bought a new camera!