Wallace D. Wattles writes of a boy sitting at a piano, frustrated that he can’t compel his hands to make the music he feels inside. He uses this story to illustrate that feeling we all have to create. That compulsion to Do and to Become.
Wattles writes, “God, the One Substance, is trying to live and do and enjoy things through humanity. He is saying “I want hands to build wonderful structures, to play divine harmonies, to paint glorious pictures; I want feet to run my errands, eyes to see my beauties, tongues to tell mighty truths and to sing marvelous songs,” and so on.”
I feel like this is one of those very core challenges of our human life. We feel that undeniable urge to do something or become something and we’re not sure how to get there. One of the most frustrating things I can think of is trying to express something I feel so strongly and yet don’t possess the skills to accurately bring forward.
It’s another way of describing potential. The potentiality of what we may become and what we might do. In the space of infinite potential, we are masters of all things. But how do we live out that potential? How do we birth the ideas flowing through our mind and desires coursing through our spirit?
I’ve often stood at that threshold between the deep urge to bring something forward and the actual manifestation of that feeling. It can be disheartening, infuriating. Like sitting in front of a blank canvas with a flood of creative energy inside you, but there’s a gap between you and the paints and brushes. Some strange crevice separating the potential from its fruition.
A few months ago I was contemplating that desire to create-to create something new. It was hard. It felt hard to speak the words in the write way, or to draw the picture as it should be. Like no expression of that feeling within would justify it fully.
And I thought, well that must be the point. No One creation can be good enough or complete enough to express the divinity that flows within us. So maybe it’s not about completeness. Maybe it’s the furthest thing away from perfection. Maybe the point is in the practice of trying. The attempt to give expression to the divine within.
Maybe that divine breath of life isn’t wanting to express a complete picture or outcome, maybe it just wants to express. Maybe it’s not about that boy becoming the greatest piano player in the world, maybe it’s about the steps he takes. How that urge within shapes him and his reality.
Isn’t it true that all the decisions we make and thoughts we ponder are related to some desire inside of us? That our Wanting absolutely shapes our lives and our personalities.
And so perhaps feeling complete and satisfied doesn’t come from fully becoming what’s in our mind but in the movement in the direction of its fulfillment.
Maybe God just wants to you go this way or that way, not to get somewhere, but to experience the Movement. The feelings, thoughts, and experiences that arise when you choose to move forward in a direction or Towards something. Maybe that’s what life is.
As I look back on my life, it seems to be made up of experiences compelled by my desire to get somewhere or have something. Really it’s a slideshow of events that wouldn’t have been playing if I wasn’t chasing something.
Do we have a life if we aren’t chasing something? Is life made up of: The Story of You…Trying. The Unfolding of an Attempt. The Story of How I Got Somewhere and Decided I Wanted to Be Somewhere Else [Part IV].
But we can’t help but feel the irresistible urge to Express, to Want. And it doesn’t matter if the expression is a mess or a graceful dance, only that its allowed a Way. And when you give it a Way, you are satisfying yourself and All That Is. Simply so.
Love: 