Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.
I’m reading a new book, a very short one, called Dare to Desire by John Eldredge.
Oh. My. Goodness. It’s phenomenal! The things that John is writing about aren’t incredibly profound…they’re just truths that are so often overlooked in our busy lives. I’ll post more about it later.
Here via Blogexplosion, that book sounds interesting I may have to get me a copy.
I always am stimulated by Eldridge, he seems to be a very clear and cogent thinker…and he is a no B.S. type of writer. If what he needs to say fills 60 pages, he will publish it and not fill it to 150 just to look “scholarly”.
The Journey of Desire by Eldridge was my personal “book of the year” in late ‘03 and early ‘04. I kinda hated his final conclusions in the end, really, but I could not deny that he made me think about my expectations (and disappointments because of them) in this world that is really not my home.
My favorite teacher in college said something very similar. As a Jesuit teaching at a university, he often had to help students figure out what they wanted to do with their lives.
The traditional way they used to figure this out was to ask three questions. What am I good at? Does the world need what I’m good at? Do I enjoy it?
But this wasn’t sufficient. He teaches a course with the tag line “live the life that wants to live in you” and “the life you save just might be your own.” And it’s exactly that which he goes after. Find what makes you alive, what ignites you, and follow it. A great quote from Annie Dillard (Catholic, I believe):
“I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck.”
Those things that really make us resonate and shine outwardly…follow them.
Great post!