The Challenge

Otherwise known as the beginning of the journey.

In one day my whole world turned upside down. Yeah, I thought it was a great beginning for a blog post too. But don't get me wrong, it wasn't in a bad way. Quite the contrary. I finally feel free to be as big, powerful, important, and useful as I want to be.

I have always wanted to be someone, but maybe not in quite the same way as other people want to be someone. That's why I never really thought I wanted to be someone. Because I didn't want the money, the success, the fame that many people around me did. I just wanted to make a difference, to change the things that break my heart, shock me, piss me off. But since I didn't think I could really do that on a very big scale, I discounted even that dream, that desire, that pulsing, breathing, living wish and hope inside of my chest. And, quite frankly, I thought nothing of it. I really believed that I couldn't make a difference unless I was like everyone else, and that was a compromise that I was and am unwilling to make.

Until finally someone looked me in the eye and said, "Why aren't you dreaming big? You need to have dreams." Ironic that someone had to tell me that since I am a self-professed idealist, a dreamer by definition. I have lived much of my life with my head in the clouds, my eyes in the stars, and yet when it came to my own life I was dreaming about as big as the little pond I was swimming in. Needless to say I was rather shocked by this realization.

So now I am on a path, a path with a definitive goal. My goal is, get ready for it...to find my goal. Okay, stop laughing now, I'm serious. I'm looking for a path or paths that incorporate my most treasured passions; equality (specifically women's rights and issues and homosexual marriage and rights), philosophy and spirituality, environmental concerns, and nonviolence (both on an individual and a worldwide scale).

So far I'm having trouble coming up with a way to synthesize all of these, so I may have to settle for activism in several different venues. But one intriguing possibility has presented itself; that of a pastor. It is a role that I have had a love-hate relationship with for a while, and one that if I did hold would be in such a non-traditional way as to leave many people in doubt that that's what I actually was anyway. For one thing, I do not mean a preacher. I mean a leader of a group of like-minded spiritual and altruistic people who leads them in acts of love towards each other and the larger world. I mean someone who donates food drives, clothing drives, counsels the sick and wounded, donates extravagantly, volunteers, cries and prays and laughs with people. It is a rather tempting possibility. I will certainly have to think about it.