“Let the beauty of what we love be what we do.”
Rumi
Not everyone awakens to life’s possibilities at a young age. Some of us are late bloomers. Many of us were told as children that we could be whatever we wanted to be when we grew up, but once we reached the age of actually thinking about what we really wanted to be, we were told it was just a dream and dreams are for children – but, are they? Oprah Winfrey says, “The greatest adventure you can ever have is to live the life of your dreams.”, and I agree. I held onto the dream of living in France since I was fifteen and now, forty-five years later, I’m living in France. Cervantes didn’t write Don Quixote till he was fifty-eight. Grandma Moses didn’t start painting till she was seventy-six. Little House on the Prairie wasn’t published until Laura Ingalls Wilder was sixty-five and Julia Child didn’t became The French Chef until she was fifty-one.
How do we find our true callings? How do we know if we’re the creators of our own dreams? How can we begin to answer the question – what makes life worth living? How do we reconnect, especially in our later years, to everything that brings joy, inspiration and hope? We need to first become adventurous. We need to see our lives with new eyes. We need to take a risk and look inward to see where we are indifferent and inflexible. Leo Tolstoy, the great Russian writer, struggled with these dilemmas. Even though he was an acclaimed author, he was haunted by an emptiness inside. He felt disconnected from his soul. He dared to dream of the life he longed for – one of simplicity and contentment. In, A Confession, he wrote that he’d forgotten how to live. The answers he found were simple – to be of service, to meditate, to write whether he was published or not and to grow his own vegetables. What secret longings do you keep hidden and why?
There’s an old tradition in the villages of the Pyrenees mountains to renew the spirit, develop curiosity, reduce fear and foster creativity – people are encouraged to celebrate their birth date each month for a year by doing something they haven’t done before. When we experience something new we stretch and grow and discover what is meaningful. in doing so we open ourselves up to find something we like to do so much that we don’t have to force ourselves to do it, we lose track of time and forget our ‘selves. Only then will you know you’re in the flow of life. Only then will you know you’re realizing your dreams. It’s never too late.
The Holstee Manifesto.
