You Get What You Give
After a curious time of seething negative energy floating around wherever I look, the world has resumed back into its happy happy joy joy place now.
And what a week it has been.
I've taken to doing inspirational talks to my team, all aimed not at doing the job right, but at fixing their way they look at things. Everything's just a paradigm shift away. My everyday disposition is proof of that. That's the message I tried to put across. Okay. All my energies are invested in the people around me. This may seem stupid, but I have a natural disposition to just start doing so.
Today would maybe happen to be the day my labor bears fruit. Two months worth of talking and gesticulating and good choice of words, and today, a shift was seen.
A little shift in the way things are, but a shift nonetheless. And the consolation I felt was the look of hope in the eyes of these guys. The way they listen intently to what I had to say. The smiles and the laughter that wasn't there before. The praise and acknowledgment that their lives are becoming different in a way that's never been there before.
I can't sleep. I can't help smiling and the events of the day just keep on roiling around in my head. I dismissed the feeling the entire day. I should have known that repressing feelings, even positive ones, would lead to a sleepless night.
The ability to reach into the soul of fragile men and women, gain their trust, and then take care of it. To show them that despite the seeming chaos that exists in the world, a person will stand up and fight for the beautiful and preserve the pristine in them. It changes people. It empowers them. Their fires burn a little bit brighter and they begin to actually feel like they have a purpose, that things look a little bit brighter.
I am no amateur with the hearts of men. I have held it and broken some of those I've held in the past. But what that has done was shown me my own true self and my selfish needs, needs I need to fulfill or resolve whether it is invented or essential. And when that is done, all that is left is a me that is more whole, who can then proceed to help the others who are yet to discover this.
In no way do I claim to be whole and perfect. In fact, the very realization that I am imperfect, and forever will be, is as close to human perfection as I'll ever get.
This is a private victory for me. A public victory for us. It feels fantastic. I have, of course, no one to share this with but lil ol livejournal and maybe you the reader.
And let me be mayabang. Wow. How the hell did I know what to do? How the fucking blazes did I know which things would lead to what, and which paths to abandon in favor of new ones? I try to remember, and all I get is an image of a crusading me, full of righteous fury, stubbornly sticking to the untrod, difficult path that I felt was essentially right.
Why is this so important? Because my friends, this is validation that I'm doing things right. That while I stumble along my own way to a future I can never predict, I am doing things mostly right. And I am influencing the people around me in a good way.
I watched an artist on you tube explain what an artist does. I think the gist of what she said was that an artist could take inspiration from the world around him and recreate that into a specific way into something that is usually a medium. He interprets the world around him and reinvents it. If I may be so bold to say (and this analogy will be quite a stretch), I can relate to that. I take whatever I see, hear, feel, and experience, and pour it into the lives of people. I recreate the world person by person. My world consists of people, and I seem to live for making these people more beautiful than they think they are inside of them. That's a win win situation. So while this may essentially be a selfish act (subscribing to that philosophy), people get something out of it anyway..
And what a week it has been.
I've taken to doing inspirational talks to my team, all aimed not at doing the job right, but at fixing their way they look at things. Everything's just a paradigm shift away. My everyday disposition is proof of that. That's the message I tried to put across. Okay. All my energies are invested in the people around me. This may seem stupid, but I have a natural disposition to just start doing so.
Today would maybe happen to be the day my labor bears fruit. Two months worth of talking and gesticulating and good choice of words, and today, a shift was seen.
A little shift in the way things are, but a shift nonetheless. And the consolation I felt was the look of hope in the eyes of these guys. The way they listen intently to what I had to say. The smiles and the laughter that wasn't there before. The praise and acknowledgment that their lives are becoming different in a way that's never been there before.
I can't sleep. I can't help smiling and the events of the day just keep on roiling around in my head. I dismissed the feeling the entire day. I should have known that repressing feelings, even positive ones, would lead to a sleepless night.
The ability to reach into the soul of fragile men and women, gain their trust, and then take care of it. To show them that despite the seeming chaos that exists in the world, a person will stand up and fight for the beautiful and preserve the pristine in them. It changes people. It empowers them. Their fires burn a little bit brighter and they begin to actually feel like they have a purpose, that things look a little bit brighter.
I am no amateur with the hearts of men. I have held it and broken some of those I've held in the past. But what that has done was shown me my own true self and my selfish needs, needs I need to fulfill or resolve whether it is invented or essential. And when that is done, all that is left is a me that is more whole, who can then proceed to help the others who are yet to discover this.
In no way do I claim to be whole and perfect. In fact, the very realization that I am imperfect, and forever will be, is as close to human perfection as I'll ever get.
This is a private victory for me. A public victory for us. It feels fantastic. I have, of course, no one to share this with but lil ol livejournal and maybe you the reader.
And let me be mayabang. Wow. How the hell did I know what to do? How the fucking blazes did I know which things would lead to what, and which paths to abandon in favor of new ones? I try to remember, and all I get is an image of a crusading me, full of righteous fury, stubbornly sticking to the untrod, difficult path that I felt was essentially right.
Why is this so important? Because my friends, this is validation that I'm doing things right. That while I stumble along my own way to a future I can never predict, I am doing things mostly right. And I am influencing the people around me in a good way.
I watched an artist on you tube explain what an artist does. I think the gist of what she said was that an artist could take inspiration from the world around him and recreate that into a specific way into something that is usually a medium. He interprets the world around him and reinvents it. If I may be so bold to say (and this analogy will be quite a stretch), I can relate to that. I take whatever I see, hear, feel, and experience, and pour it into the lives of people. I recreate the world person by person. My world consists of people, and I seem to live for making these people more beautiful than they think they are inside of them. That's a win win situation. So while this may essentially be a selfish act (subscribing to that philosophy), people get something out of it anyway..