Trust the spark within and find your own path.
Since the release of the No Impact Man book and film I have been privileged to be in conversation with many groups. And always, someone asks me with great earnestness, “What can I do?” Many times, in other words, people ask me for how-to-save-the-planet directions.
“Just start,” I say.
And then I pause while they wait expectantly for more guidance.
“If you were to just start, without waiting for someone like me to come along, what would you do?” I ask finally.
Because, while I want to help and I want to support, I don’t want to put people back to sleep by giving them connect-the-dot directions that don’t require them to engage their spirits. I trust my listeners and my readers to figure things out for themselves way more than I trust myself to give them ideas that are appropriate to them.
After I ask what people would do if they didn’t wait for someone like me to come along, there is another pause.
Finally, I might say, “Look to yourself for guidance. What would you like to do?”
And then a person might say: “I’d like to start riding my bike to work” or “I’d like to campaign against bottled water” or “I’d like to start a compost pile in my building” or “I’d like to tell people we should love each other more.”
Then I laugh. “So why are you asking me what you can do? Just start.”
Most of us already know.
We know. You know.
Underneath the worry and the despair and the fear of doing the wrong thing, we are all imbued with a wonderful compassion and wisdom.
I love the word “inspire.” It has the same route as to respire, to breathe. To be inspired means to have the breath within in us. The breath of what? Some might say God. Some might say something else. But the breath is within us. The compassion and wisdom is there. We are all inspired, filled with the breath.
This is why I try not to give directions: I do not want to risk replacing someone else’s deep wisdom and compassion with my shallow ideas.
It could be said that, in many ways, the trouble we find ourselves in is actually caused by too many off us following directions. I don’t want to give more directions. There isn’t a shortage of directions.
One day, for example, a teacher raised her hand and said, “I want to teach second graders how to recycle. What should I do?”
But I am not a teacher. “You are the expert here, not me. You have much more of what is necessary to teach second graders about recycling than I do.”
What she needed, what we all need, is the ability to trust ourselves. That second grade teacher simply needed to trust that she was enough, that she had enough to start.
Each of us already has what we need to save the world inside of us. It’s a simply matter of trusting the impulse and putting one foot in front of the other without necessarily seeing where the path will ultimately lead.
A Buddhist might say, “Trust your True Self.” A Christian might say, “The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.” There is no need for directions. We all have a True Self. We all have the Kingdom of Heaven within us.
So many of us have nascent ideas for what we can do to help our communities or our planet, but we don’t start because we are waiting for permission or directions from someone else. But we don’t need permission. We don’t need directions.
We can find our own paths.
We can take charge ourselves.
We can simply start.
- Posted by Colin Beavan on January 6, 2010 at 5:00 am
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Tagged as: Environment, Spirituality
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I couldn’t agree more with what you wrote! Just start doing what you want to be doing and the rest can be figured out along the way.
I couldn’t agree with you more. We are way more powerful than any of us give ourselves credit for, but we spend our whole lives following other people’s rules and images of ourselves. I just wrote something similar on my blog a few days ago.
Thanks for sharing!
Thanks for this post. I resolved to start recycling cardboard this year (in addition to the other plastics and glass that I already recycle). But I was kinda waiting for someone to tell me how (my city has weird rules about cardboard). This post inspired me to go to the city recycling website and look it up! Thanks!
This is a keeper. As a person who deals with people in life dilemas alllllll day, I have found that the only impossible task to teach is to begin. If you lead someone to begin. Thier inspiration will send them to new hieghts. I never understood the lead the horse to water analogy until this point in my life. Even if you hand someone the answers if they have not mined for them themselves and want to start… they do not drink. We are our best guru but we have to listen to that little voice and give it create for being attached to the God source within. I absolutely love this blog. Way to share. Thanks for the water. Callie
here’s some spiritual inspiration, & it’s got oprah in it:
http://vimeo.com/4518691
1Jn 2:18 Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are *there many antichrists*; whereby we know that it is the last time.
1Jn 2:22 Who is a liar but *he that denieth that Jesus is *the Christ*? He is antichrist*, that denieth the Father and the Son.
1Jn 4:3 And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world.
2Jn 1:7 For many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist.
Hi there,
You are a ‘category winner’ in my ‘25 Best Blogs of 2009′. Congratulations!
See the other category winners and your mention (and link)here: http://www.cricketwife.com/2010/01/25-best-blogs-of-2009-part-1.html.
Have a great 2010.
Cheers,
Sara Bradshaw
Some people need to have the whole plan laid out ahead of them. The problem I have with that then you just stick with the plan, and don’t think outside the box.
I agree with you. People know deep down what they like and what they want to do, and it always is a little different than what anybody else would have in mind.