Lead a vivid life that does good
It’s interesting how sometimes the desire to capture a moment on camera, causes me to miss the moment in its essence.
Like trying to take a good photo of balloons and missing the opportunity to look up and take in beauty of the day, the sounds, the fun and the sights.
Missing the moment.
I think in many ways, we do that often.
[185 | 365 ‘Balloons Over Waikato’ – Early morning and late night at the Balloons]
As a teenager lighting and sound were my thing and I can remember attending a course with a renowned lighting designer for the performing arts, whose name alludes me.
At one point during the course we had to create mood for a tent scene on the stage using lighting effects and one single candle.
Having that one candle on the stage made the design difficult to say the least. In a pitch black theatre, where you literally can’t see your hand if it is an inch from your face, a candle is exceptionally bright. The light it generates can’t easily be softened or turned down. People sitting in close proximity of the candle were illuminated by its presence alone.
20 plus years on, I can still remember a lot that I learnt on that course, about how the eye works, about how we see black and white in the moonlight, about creative license, and about how bright a single candle can be.
Every now and then you meet people who are like candles in the dark. Every now and then I meet someone whose flame burns so brightly in the dark patches of this world that it lights up everyone around them.
If one small flame can make a difference, maybe I can as well.
10 years ago today a great challenge was before me. On one hand I was compelled to care for my wife in labour with our first child. On the other hand was my desire to watch Team New Zealand defend the America’s cup. Trust me, balancing the two, while at a hospital is very difficult.
Today that baby girl is 10 and she too is balancing. Only her balance is physical on an imitation Rip-stick. I tried it out tonight. Trust me, balancing on two wheels is very difficult, particularly for an old guy like me.
Yesterday I was speaking to a person who used the term “work-life balance”. It’s a fascinating term. Work-life balance almost implies that you work and then you have a life. Life is far more complex than just work or life. Sports, family, children, finances, churches, work, friends, exercise, relaxing, entertainment, hobbies and the list goes on.
For me there is a continual struggle to balance all of the facets of life. Not just work and everything else. Maybe, we have the wrong term. What if instead of teaching people to have work-life balance, maybe we need to teach people to have “whole-life balance”.
Whole life balance I suspect is harder than balancing a wife in labour and the Americas cup, or an old guy riding a rip-stick.
Whole life balance. Provocative?
You know that experience you have when you first turn the light off and everything goes pitch black. Then slowly, over a period of time, your eyes adjust. This process is called night adaptation. It takes roughly 8 mins to half adapt to darkness and around 30 mins to get full night adaption.
Once our eyes are adjusted. We can walk around with very little light as though it was daylight. We get used to walking around in the dark, and the night feels very bright.
Suddenly someone flashes a bright white light towards our eyes for less than a second. In that second our night adaptation is destroy completely and it will take a further 30 mins to completely restore it. We start fumbling around in the darkness again, wishing it were really daylight.
I took this photo yesterday morning. The bright light is not the sun, it is a street lamp that illuminates small exposed patches in its vicinity, while still casting deep shadows into the darkness. Dawn is breaking in the background. Daylight is coming.
Here’s the point. How bright a light will I be to the people around me? Will I be a bright white light that has significant radical impact? Or will I be like the streetlight, an artificial light that illuminates small patches while leaving deep shadows?
“So I run with purpose in every step. I am not just shadow boxing. I discipline my body like an athlete, training it to do what I should.” – Today I ran 5 km’s. It’s been a while and it was hard work. I had to keep setting small targets. I’ll run to this corner, and then I’ll run to these shops. All the while I had the end goal of completing the run in mind.
As I was running I was thinking about how hard work life can be. Paul talked metaphorically about running with purpose in every step. Sometimes the goals we are called to, seem so unattainable and so distant.
It is easier to give up.
To stop running.
It reminds me that I have to set small obtainable targets and run with purpose to each one. Then move to the next target with purpose.
This is how improvement comes, how perseverance comes.
Then we complete.
We finish.
We win!
A roundabout. Have you ever been a passenger in car when they decide to just keep going around and around a roundabout? You fly past exit after exit and just end up in the same place. With each rotation you feel both fun and sickness.
A roundabout. That’s what life feels like sometimes. It feels like you work exceedingly hard on this one big project or problem and then end up right back where you started. Doing the same thing again and again.
And again.
There are exits for sure, opportunities to succeed, to love, to step out. Opportunities bring risk and danger, so most of the time we just stay on the roundabout of life, with this strange fun, sick feeling.
I’ve thought a lot about Carpe Diem in the last few weeks. ‘Seize the Day”. I’ve been trying to make something of relevance, of importance, happen every single day. It doesn’t matter how small it is, I make a change for the better. It’s hard, but it helps me feel like I am moving forward, not being stuck on the roundabout.
When we do something small each day, soon big things happen. And we look back on our days and see progress, not just more of the same.
I took this picture on my way home from a meeting at 10:30pm. I hadn’t taken a photo yet. But at least the day was NOT a roundabout day. It was a day of small steps.
I have often heard of a bucket or tank being used to describe energy in life.
At the bottom of the bucket are leaks, small drips that drain energy, reduce it. If my bucket gets to empty, completely empty, then my passion dies, drip.
I stop enjoying life, drip.
Or worse, I become a DRIP.
If the bucket is full, I bounce around the world. On fire. With passion.
If life is like a bucket of energy, it would be good to know what builds into it. And what reduces it.
So I started to focus on reducing the leaks, patching them up, stopping the drain of energy. With hindsight I see that it doesn’t solve the problem at all. If my energy is all but gone, stopping the leaks just slows the process of turning into one giant drip.
Of course, what a drip I am! So I focus on filling my bucket. I start searching for a tap, or a fire hose. A quick refill. Anything instant.
But it too is allusive.
Then today as I try to take pictures of water drops in the rain. I realise energy comes one drop at a time.
Drop,
Drop,
Drop.
Once you have more drops coming in, that drips leaking out, your bucket starts to fill, your energy rises.
I’m sorted now of course. Most lakes and rivers are filled one drop of water at a time, I just need to hunt for drops, not drips. I would prefer steady rain of course.
Then it hit me. As my energy drips away, as my bucket gets empty, I become more of a drip. Then, I can become a drip to other people. I start draining their energy.
I realised that I need drops of energy, so that I can give drops of energy.
And I need to give drops of energy, so that I can get drops of energy.
This week I resolve to go in search of drops of energy.
Interesting question isn’t it? I often struggle to know what I will be doing next week, and in moments of absolute brilliance, I might do some top level thought into next 3 – 5 years.
I’m skim reading a book called “Total Leadership” at the moment and one of its exercises is to write down what your life and leadership will amount to in 15 years.
15 years is a long way away.
In 15 years, I will have been married for 27 years!
In 15 years, my eldest daughter will be 24!
In 15 years, I don’t want to be doing the same things I am doing now.
In 15 years, I want to have made a significant impact on the world.
It is an interesting think about 15 years from now. I have never done it before, but I sense that it will help give perspective to the small issues I currently face.
I was chatting with friends this week about mountains
Metaphorical ones.
Those huge obstacles in front of us. Projects, struggles, illnesses, financial problems, relationship issues … things that seem too BIG to handle.
We were discussing about how we often cry out to God and ask him to pick them up and through them into the sea. To make them go away.
And yet we need to climb mountains. They are good for us and through them we learn heaps and are cultivated and grown.
The problem with mountains is often the obstacle in front of us, is the issue of the moment.
We forget about what the view from the top of the mountain will be like.
We forget the satisfaction that comes from making it to the top.
We forget that climbing mountains is worth it.
We just see the obstacle!
Maybe when we remember how good the mountain can be for us, we will stop asking for it to be taken away, be thankful for it.
Maybe we will then focus on the more important task of getting to the top.
"I believe that I am responsible for my own personal development. Only I know who I want to become. Only I know my real strenghts and weaknesses, my passion and my talent. Only I know the price I am willing to pay to be who I can become."
– Fred Smith Sr.
How very true of me!
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