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Today's
Meditation:
Inspiration comes like a bolt of lightning out of the
sky to strike us with wonderful new original ideas just
when we need them, right? I don't think so. In
my experience, inspiration is something that we need to
make an effort to find-- and to recognize. It isn't
always difficult to find-- after all, we're surrounded by
inspiring people, places, and events-- but it's usually
necessary for us to look for it rather than waiting around
for it to find us while we sit around doing nothing.
Inspiration, of course, isn't always about artistic
endeavors. Sometimes we need to be inspired to
practice better parenting, to do our jobs better, to find
a solution to a problem that's been plaguing us.
Sometimes inspiration is a certain gift for a certain
person, or a certain strategy to develop or improve a
certain relationship. It can come from talking to
someone who's insightful or from sitting beneath a tree
during a rainstorm-- or from working really hard to see
beneath a certain something that we've only seen on the
surface so far.
It does take work to find inspiration, but that work can
be enjoyable. It can be a pleasant search or a
grueling quest, but either way it promises to be rewarding
once we find what we're looking for. One problem is,
though, that many of us think that we know exactly what
we're looking for, exactly what form the inspiration
should take. We know what this picture should look
like or what this poem should be, and if that's the case,
it's not inspiration that we're looking for, but
confirmation of what we think is best. Inspiration
will open new roads to us, not take us down the same tired
roads.
If we want inspiration, we need to search for it, and we
need to be open to accept it for what it is and not try
to make it what we want it to be. It's out there, in
countless forms, in great abundance. Unfortunately,
though, we so often get caught up in how we think things
should be that we stay blind to the inspiration that can
help us to see things in new ways, and do things that we
never before imagined ourselves doing.
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