Thursday, October 28, 2010

When you're at your best

Perhaps because I've been working toward the Patterns exhibit, images like this one fascinate me.

I get that they're not great art, but I've always loved reflections, and reflections of patterned surfaces onto curved surfaces particularly interest me.  What happens to the lines?  Do they become concave, or convex?  Do they lengthen, or shorten?  Smudge together or separate?  And what happens to the colors?

Which is just one more example of this curious phenomenon: when I have the camera in my hand, I become the sort of person I most want to be.

Curious, intrigued.
Present, aware.
Enriched, fulfilled.
Giving, and Sharing.

They always say you should marry the person who brings out the best in you.  Perhaps that should be true of career choices, too: don't do the thing you SHOULD do, or the thing you're GOOD at.  Do the thing that brings out the best in you.

Something to think about.  If you're out of work, and need to look for a job anyway, why not take the opportunity to look for a job that feeds your soul, makes -- or allows  -- you to be a better person -- whatever that might look like to you.

Watch what it is that you're doing when you feel REALLY REALLY good about yourself and who you are becoming.  And maybe -- unless you're under the influence of something mind-altering -- that could give you a clue about who you were born to be.  (Which is just one more reason you should stay away from mind-altering substances: they get in the way of knowing who you could be at your best.)

3 comments:

Joyce Wycoff said...

I love the idea of picking a career that brings out the best in you. What different thinking and questions that stimulates ... starting with: What *is* the best in me?

Anonymous said...

First, I very much enjoy your blog.

This is one of my biggest frustrations as an "accompanying spouse." We have lived in three different, far-flung countries in the past eight years. I speak the local languages -- but poorly. I have volunteered but I dream of a job helping the intellectually disabled -- or even pursuing a chaplaincy career in such an area. But I can't afford a degree; I don't particularly want a distance education; there are no such opportunities where I live (and I have searched high and low). I know I would thrive sharing my life with these people but I can't find the opportunity, short of ditching my husband!

Diane Walker said...

Thanks, MS! Sounds frustrating. But I'm thinking something I read in Pema Chodron recently applies here: "With equanimity we realize that no matter what comes along, we're always standing in the middle of a sacred space. Only with equanimity can we see that everything that comes into our circle has come to teach us what we need to know."

Somehow there is a gift in what is. Perhaps it will be a matter of resting into the discovery of that? I am hardly one to preach; like you, I'm always impatient for what's next. But I'm learning...