I started a little rock collection at my part-time job.
One day I was telling my co-worker about how I planned to start photographing rocks as fine art. (Her desk is on the other side of this partition from mine.) She remarked as how I could fill up the top of our partition with interesting rocks if I wanted to. Well, that’s all the encouragement it took! Since then I can’t stop seeing neat rocks in the gravel outside the door to work, so I’ve been bringing them in! There are some interesting cracked rocks this time of year because the freeze/thaw cycle is opening up the natural bedding planes in some of the sedimentary rocks. I’m making a game to see how many I can find 😉
It’s not about rocks so much as about bringing wonder to every moment.
Yeah, we work in a library, yeah it can be boring. (More for me because I’m so driven by making art and running my business that the tameness of library work palls by comparison.) But, why should it be that there are no wonder-filled rays of geologic sunshine to brighten our desk spaces while we’re there? (Other than the rock jewelry I wear every day, of course!) Rocks aren’t a decoration to me, they’re a symbol. A symbol of the natural wonder that’s all around us!
When you’re called/driven toward a life purpose, you should look for ways to fulfill it, in all aspects of your life!
Notice I said should instead of could!! If my business’s mission is to inspire wonder and make people’s lives better for its presence, then it’s a sacred mandate for me to cultivate a practice of inspiring people to see the wonder already present in their own lives in every moment. (Especially important to inspire myself and those around me in those moments when I generally feel the least inspired.) If you really believe what you say you believe, then it should be present in everything you do!
I’m not saying you should start preaching street sermons or handing out pamphlets at the laundromat. (Please, please don’t do that! Please!) I’m saying we should all be looking for places where the thing that matters most to us can be elegantly, seamlessly expressed as an extension of our being. It’s not always easy! (At least not for me!!) When I’m alphabetizing books and dreaming about all the other fun business things I could be doing, inspiring wonder is the last thing on my mind. But, if we’re going to stand up and declare our deepest passion to the world from our websites, then we need to make sure we’re declaring it from the core of every one of our simplest human interactions! I’ll be thinking about this the next time I’m waiting in line in the grocery store, what about you?