Hi Everyone!
Here is this week's Something of Meaning, a few thoughts that will hopefully help you cultivate a little creativity, connection, and community in your life, and bring you a little joy along the way. If you feel inspired, please feel free to forward this to friends.
An Idea for Consideration
Gifts
The Haudenosaunee (also known as the Iroquois) have a particular approach to “finding our gift.”
Every individual has a job, to look for the gifts of others and, if they notice something special in someone, to be sure to let that person know. This is taken very seriously, because you might be the only one that recognizes the gift in the other person and, if you don’t point it out, we all lose out on benefitting from that gift.
These days, the words “gift” and “talent” are interchangeable. Often, when we hear, “you’re so talented!” The next sentence is something like, “I could never do that.”
We love to celebrate others and minimize our own value, perhaps because it keeps us safe from judging whether our own gifts and talents are “good enough” to share. We often aren’t capable of recognizing our own gifts at all. We’re too close. We can see every imperfection in perfect detail, recite a laundry list of reasons why our gifts aren’t ready to be shared. Imperfections become apparent in almost everything if you look closely enough.
But it’s called a gift because we’re supposed to give it away. It’s not for you. It’s for everyone else.
“One must pass the learning onto others or there has been no gift at all.” -quote from A.A.
How do you know if your gift (what you create, or share, or say, or do) is “good enough?” Listen to what others are telling you…and when they say, “I love that,” believe them.
Your gifts aren’t for you. They’re for your community. So, be generous and share them.
A Question I've Found Helpful
Think back over your life. Ask yourself:
What have I been told about my gifts?
What have people told me they love about me?
What have I said, done, or made that caused joy and appreciation in others?
Something I Find Interesting
13 Life-Learnings from 13 Years of Brain Pickings (Now the Marginalian)
I loved reading this reflection from Maria Popova on some of her key learnings after more than a decade of doing creative work.
Her website, The Marginalian, is "the record of the reckoning — a one-woman labor of love, exploring what it means to live a tender, thoughtful life of purpose and gladness, wonder-smitten by reality, governed by the understanding that creativity is a combinatorial force: ideas, insights, knowledge, and inspiration acquired in the course of being alive and awake to the world, composited into things of beauty and substance we call our own."
A Quote That Inspires Me
"The purpose of life is not to triumph over evil but to keep pushing the wheel of justice forward. And when you realize that that is the end point, you then never expect to win. And if you never expect to win you're not disappointed when you lose. And because of that you can keep fighting with the same energy when you're sixty-nine as you had when you were twenty."
-Wade Davis, author of The Wayfinders (and many more)
If you'd like to explore what else I've been up to this week, you can read my latest blog post, listen to my latest podcast episode, or check out the music I've been creating on Youtube.
Until next time, I wish all of you the best in your journey to make something of meaning.
Much love,
Aidan