All You Need Is

Note: This is a delightful 2nd guest post by Barbara Winter. I love her writing style and all that she has me pondering about when I read what she has to share. Her outstanding blog is Buon Viaggio, Barbara Winter's Thoughts on the Joyfully Jobless Journey, located at http://joyfullyjobless.com/blog/ . I much appreciate her doing this for me, and welcome guest posts on making a difference in the world, informing us about a cause or charity and solutions to world issues.

There was an ad running on television a couple of years ago that always caused me to stop and watch it. It featured forty years of photos with narration that goes, “This is Paul. He’s been a Quarryman, Beatle, Wing, poet, painter, father, frontman, producer, business mogul and if that weren’t enough, a knight. The key is, never stop doing what you love.”

In many ways, that seems truly radical. We all know that Doing What You Love is not a course offered by many schools. But the notion that love is the key to discovering multiple parts of ourselves is one really far out message.

There was a time, of course, when it was assumed that a person could be many different things. During the period known as the Renaissance, when the creative spirit was in full bloom, it was not unusual for an individual to be a poet, businessowner, artist, soldier, linguist and lover.

Although such thinking fell out of fashion (and with it came less creative thinking), all sorts of people have told me they always suspected they were in possession of a Renaissance soul. I believe we all are and that feeding that soul is an exercise in love.

Love and work sounds like an impossible combination to many people, but it’s the starting point of all great (and many small) undertakings.

“The real purpose of work,” says Claude Whitmyer, founder of the Center for Good Work, “is to give us an opportunity to practice being human—to discover everything we are and all that we can be, both as individuals and as members of a community.”

Psychologist Marsha Sinetar expands on that notion. She says, “Work can be used to communicate our love for self and other. For the person who is spiritually inclined, work even becomes a vehicle for devotion, a way of utilizing one’s gifts and talents to serve others, a way of truthful self-expression.”

Lately, I’ve had messages from several frustrated people who feel stuck because they don’t know what It is for them. Nothing they’ve tried seems to satisfy. It’s a Limboland I’ve visited myself and it’s not a pleasant place to travel.

The passport out of this discouraging state is to step back and give serious thought to purpose. To never stop doing what you love, you have to start doing what you love. Yup, those same puzzling questions that philosophers have discussed for centuries still matter.

The aforementioned Paul knew from early on what his bigger intention was. He explains, “See, my trick in life is to get away from having a job. That’s been my guiding light.”

Not working for someone else may not be the only way to feed our Renaissance soul, but it’s the best way I’ve seen to develop multiple talents.

At the same time all the e-mails of frustration were rolling in, I was also deluged with messages from numerous new entrepreneurs who had a different story to tell. The common thread in each of their accounts was that their business was teaching them new skills or opening them to things they’d been avoiding.

One woman said she was finding herself in leadership roles for the first time in her life. Another is doing her first media interviews. Over and over, they told me about discovering the unmapped territory inside themselves.

Like everyone who lets love lead, they’ve discover a surprising bonus: love neutralizes fear. When that happens, amazement follows.

Then there’s this strong admonition from Kahil Gibran: “If you cannot work with love, but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.”

That sounds like marching orders to me.