Inspiration

I have placeholders on my computer and in my paperwork for "inspiration." These are the things I see that make such a difference. It includes certain people I religiously read for their take on life. One of them is Maria Shriver and her Sunday Pages.

More than once I have started my Sunday finalizing my thoughts for a sermon I will give and then read her column. My sermon evaporates as my mind grabs one of her concepts and rearranges the tiles of my mind. Suddenly I am doing a completely different sermon.

Today I was reading her column and I loved one of the questions she had for herself and for each of us. "What are we running toward?" I believe in this - it is important to have a vision, a passion ahead for us.

It seems like when we have created enough memories our first tendency is to start to live our lives in the memories of the past - from the challenges to the triumphs. When we do that we also will find that we have our own vision of the past. Our vision of our past will always put us in a better light. It softens those times when we were definitely not Divine filled, but very human. This is a natural turn.

I had a conversation with a friend in which we realized that both of us lean toward moving forward and don't take time to look back. We are President Bartlett from the show "The West Wing" when he comes to a point and states with great haste "What's next!"

The only difficulty with that is we must always include a moment to be fully present to let go of the past and move toward the future. We need that moment to pause and get our feet centered on where we are.

So the term of running toward something is so attractive to me. It enables me to keep moving.

I saw a study that for many people the goal of retirement is an end, a destination. So there is a statistic that shows a large number of retirees die within the first year of retirement. This is because they have come to the destination (retired) and there is nothing left to stay for. They have nothing to run toward. Thus far I have retired three different times and I have more retirements ahead as I choose new interests..

Define and determine what your roadmap ahead looks like and the direction you are going. There is a whole world ahead filled with treasures and teasers to take us to the next gem - just for us!