On Purposeful Becoming, may you always be in search of becoming someone better than yourself!
As I was working on this project, I went to look for the WH Auden quote “Leap Before You Look,” and came across this piece. It describes the heart of an entrepreneur. Some of us are content to be sheep, fearful of leaving the confines and safety of the flock and convention, but some of us are lions and eagles and we know that we are born for something bigger. I thought that maybe in this reading you might catch a better glimpse of me. I AM the master of my world and it is filled with purpose becoming. If my wings are clipped I will still sing, if I am harnessed, I will still roar, but: in the long run, so constrained, I will become, but a shadow of myself and I will die, lonely, sorrowful, and unfulfilled. I want to live my life with no regrets. I’ll make mistakes, but they won’t be failures, just learning experiences from which to grow. Money is a tool. It is a means to an end and even when we lose it all, God makes a way. When we are married to money, we will eventually find it to be as worthless at comforting our soul, our heart, our spirit, as the paper on which it is printed. We only really carry with us relationships and experiences. Money and things are but transient baubles in the greater scheme of things. I believe there is greatness in all of us. The difference is in whether we leap to freedom like a lion or an eagle or we let life shove us over the ravine while we are looking, so we fall slowly through our uninspired lives to a tragically ordinary end.
We have built walls of fear that we perceive keep us safe, but in truth they are the cage that keep us from becoming ourselves. We may use money to control everyone and everything around us. IT is our wall, the tool with which we can separate ourselves from the rest of the world, convinced that by having it, it defines our worth, that it will protect us from pain and discomfort. It can indeed give us creature comforts, but it can never comfort the person inside, trapped in the cage. The thing is, people who spend their lives trapped in cages, fear, never try to leave the cages, because they don’t even realize they are trapped. Even if they do, most haven’t the intestinal fortitude to break free, because they are too fearful of the success that may lie on the other side, the accountability for themselves with all their warts. Most caged birds prefer to look in the magic mirror and tell themselves how beautiful they are and to pity the world around them from their superior perch, never even attempting to exit when the door is finally opened for them to escape to freedom. A freed bird may die, but at least it soared free, experiencing the abundant life of an unchained soul.