What inspires you?
Can you think of anything that inspires you? By this, I mean on a deep, meaningful, visceral level. What calls to the creation opportunity within your soul? I’m not looking for “Sunday School” answers that I learned about in college (by this meaning that even though you’re talking about the Crossing of the Red Sea and Moses in Exodus that somehow the answer to the question is “Jesus”). This is a hard question. I honestly am having issues with coming up with a legitimate answer.
I really enjoy this time of year because it calls for introspection into one’s life and figuring out what you liked and didn’t like about the past year. This season also evokes those warm and cozy feelings while you gather with your family/friends to celebrate the holidays. You also have to answer lots of questions (you may not want to answer) from said family/friends that you may have not seen in a while. Here’s a possible list:
“So are you dating anyone these days?”
“You’ve been married for ________. When are you going to finally have kids?”
“So what is it that you’ve been up to these days?”
“What’s your opinion on Trump (or any other sort of politics)?”
“So when are you going to get a “real” job?”
There are so many more things that could be added to this list that I frankly couldn’t think of. However, based out of my understanding, these questions seem to be some easy hot topic items and no matter how well-meaning they may be asked, sometimes there aren’t any good answers. There are so many hard life things that could be filled within these that others just wouldn’t understand.
But back to the question, what inspires you? For me, I’ve been very thankful to have the last 5 months as a time of reflection and break from the natural chaos of life. Having had this opportunity I am now able to see things more clearly than I was previously able to. I’m inspired by sunsets. I’m inspired by watching YouTube videos. I’m inspired by reading books. I’m inspired by conversations with people. I’m inspired by so many things.
While I was a freshman in college, I can remember a conversation in a class talking about our viewpoints. (We also watched movies like Star Wars and Shawshank Redemption as a part of our grades for this class.) We were talking about leaves and how we knew what they were and how they look. If you look very closely at a leaf, you are able to see all the different structures that make up a leaf, the cells, mitochondria, cell walls, chloroplasts and such. But if you look at a leaf in the scheme of nature, the picture looks much different. You see the leaf as apart of a branch, tree, forest, and so on.
If you look at yourself as a leaf, this makes it so much more complicated. Besides the fact that humans don’t have cell walls and chloroplasts, we are each individually made up of many things. We are, at our essence, what inspires us. If you are inspired by bravery, you work on becoming brave. If you are inspired by the ability to make the perfect cup of coffee, you work on making the perfect cup of coffee. The greatest loss would come from someone wasting their essence by never discovering what inspires them.
The thing I’m most inspired by is the “Sunday School” answer. Jesus. The reason I know this is because Jesus is the driving force behind whatever I do. Jesus is at the core of my being and my essence. If you do the necessary deep reflection, sometimes it’s okay to have the easy answer.