Wake Up
Photo by Alexander Andrews on Unsplash
My efforts don’t speak a word of meaning if it isn’t first dealt with in a real way in my heart. Motivation and growth is a gift. Perseverance and pursuit speak volumes. The ability to go on a daily walk can be the healing answer to so much pain in your life. But it takes intentionality, and without that it’s easy to become inactive.
The consistency of idleness creates apathy and apathy can actually be a painful way to live. It affects your mood, dulls your senses, and creates an orphan out of your mindset and dreams. COVID-19 took away taste and smell. It took breath and life, but what does apathy steal in a most vivid, daily destructive pattern? It violently, but subtly and maybe even strategically tears away at your identity.
It steals desire, passion and movement. It constricts positioning, perspective and sight. It dulls art and takes opinion and freewill away in the most sneaky and lazy of ways. It starts small like the bite of a brown recluse and eats away at you, numbing your feelings so you don’t even notice the decay in your heart.
I close my eyes and imagine these stale thoughts of lazy, lifeless places. Stagnant water isn’t welcoming in how it sits and attracts bacteria. At some point it starts to dry up and that’s when the smell becomes a repellant to anything other than that which is ready to die.
I used to think I was falling, but I’m just landing. I think you’re just landing too. Maybe you’re sitting on your butt. That doesn’t matter. Get up and sift the sand with me. Get your hands dirty and feel out your surroundings. Is it red rock, moonstone or are there remnants of silver and flecks of gold? Wake up to the possibility that you could be standing in the middle of authentic rust and good old fashioned dirt.
It’s easy to think that a season is hard, but what if saying that is just an excuse to slow down in the wrong ways? It’s not time to slow down or back up, not unless you’re taking some strategic steps backward to catapult yourself over the chasm between where you are and where you need to be.
All I’m saying is let go of the coal and pick up the essence of life. Don’t walk alone and don’t walk carelessly either. Step onto the muddy path that you didn’t quite expect, and take a tangent toward a beautiful place you haven’t seen yet. Look up at the sky and let the breeze steady your breath. You’re not meant to die slowly. You’re created to live in a vibrant, passionate, artistic, bold, kind, unique, dashing, dreamy, and inspiring way.
