Pathwalking 80
It is never in your own best interest to ignore an inspired idea.
Yet often, we do. And we make all sorts of excuses – It’s too impractical. There isn’t enough time/money/resources for that. I am unable to do that. I can dream, but I cannot make the dream reality. It’s impossible.
When we fall into this trap, it becomes truth. Truth is not, as many people believe, a simple notion. I have long said there are three brands to every truth – mine, yours, and the absolute. And sometimes they are ALL true, but from a certain point of view.
Denying an inspired idea is often because we just do not see the how. I have a great idea for an amazing invention, but I am not an engineer, and I do not have the necessary capital to make it happen, etc, etc. We are really good at seeing the impossible path from inspiration to reality, and all too often because we accept it as impossible, it gets ignored.
Pathwalking is about choice. I think I say that every week, but it’s a fundamental point that I don’t believe I can reiterate too many times. Choosing to accept something as impossible is a choice. Plain and simple.
I believe that nothing is truly impossible. Improbable, impractical, difficult and maybe even unreasonable as something may seem, I do not believe it is simply impossible. But the fear of the unknown and change and uncertainty makes calling it impossible an easy cop out.
I am a writer. I have been published thus far twice in short story anthologies, and self published the first year of these Pathwalking posts. I have written a number of press releases and magazine articles and Patch dot com news stories and website content, and I post to at least two blogs per week. I have four completed novels (one of which has even been professionally edited), and four novelettes written for National Novel Writer’s Month.
I write every day. Whether it’s for one of my ongoing works of fiction, a blog, a business, or anything in between I am always writing. Some days I feel less inspired than others, and I feel less accomplishment because my first love in writing, fiction, gets less attention than I should want to give it. But I am still inspired to write, even if no one has taken a chance on me to publish a novel.
This is not self aggrandizing, this is part of my point. I am inspired to write. I love to write, writing is my bliss. Words flow from my mind to my fingers across my keyboard and into sentences and paragraphs conveying ideas and information and even whole worlds for an audience that sometimes is rather limited. Despite years of submitting my fiction to agents and rejections, I continue. Despite sometimes tepid support from people I care about, I continue. I believe in my own ability to write, and I believe that I need to follow this inspiration.
No, it is not entirely paying the bills. No, it is not yet making me a household name like Stephen King or JK Rowling. No, I do not get paid for most of the blogs I publish in. But I have still achieved success in following my inspiration.
Success is a personal measure. I set the bar. And I will not deny that the bar for me used to be seeing the spine of a book in Barnes and Noble with MY name on it. I do not consider my current interpretation of success, however, as any kind of “lowering” of the bar. Instead, I simply feel successful in how frequently I write. I feel successful with every weekly blog post, every website text, every press release, every completed chapter in my unpublished works. I am successful in that I follow my inspiration, and I write.
I did deny my inspiration for a time. Most of college, and the first few years after I wrote nothing. And it wasn’t until I began a short piece about a loan character in an impossible situation emerging victorious-but-battered that would eventually blossom into a multiple novel epic that I realized I had been missing something. I was missing my inspiration. I was missing my bliss. I let other concerns replace my inspiration to write.
Thomas Edison said, “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.” I disagree with his fraction, but the point is still valid. Inspiration is important, and finding and following it can be difficult and tiring and perspiring, but it is what makes us who we are. And choosing for ourselves based on what inspires us is what Pathwalking is.
So you’ve thought up an incredible invention or an amazing business model or some other inspired notion. But you have no idea how to take the inspiration and make it real. You are not an engineer or scientist or business person or independently wealthy. But that does not mean you are without options, and without the ability to choose to find some way to follow your bliss.
Choose your path. It may look impossible, it may be that while you see the start (the inspiration) and the end (the realization of the inspiration) the path between is unclear. You can still choose to make it. I believe that it is following inspiration that leads us to find greater satisfaction and ultimately happiness in our existence.
What/whom inspires you to be all that you can be?
This is the eightieth entry in my series. These weekly posts are specifically about walking along the path of life, and my desire to make a difference in this world along the way. Thank you for joining me.
The first year of Pathwalking is available in print and for your Kindle.
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