I will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that what is deep is holy, if we follow the truth, it will bring us out safe at last. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Prompt:  Think of a time when you didn’t think you were capable of doing something, but then surprised yourself.  How will you surprise yourself this week? (Author: Ashley Ambirge)

Doing Wow!

Come from behind, surprise a child by saying “boo” and the reaction is either to giggle for joy or cry out of fear.   The surprise “boo” breaks routine and brings some expected wow into a child’s life.  That’s a good thing.  It’s called living.  I try doing wow weekly.  My wow is simply exploring, discovering or trying something outside of my other routines.

Routine defines our work.  If you write every day for a living, you’re a writer. An artist’s routine is to paint, draw or sculpt.  Campaigning is a politician’s routine.  If telling jokes is your routine, you’re a comedian.  Routine also limits living.  Habitual thoughts of defeat builds fears and insecurities. Constantly being late misses early opportunities.  A series of sameness avoids discovering something new.  A routine of inaction means no progress.

Surprises balance our lives.  Too much routine and too few surprises lack wow, and without wow we never fully come alive.  As a child, I waited for others to surprise me.  As an adult, I work on surprising myself by doing wow regularly.  This week doing wow will mean doing something as hard as writing and posting this blog daily while traveling and doing something as easy as congratulating myself and thinking, “Wow, I did it!”

These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of it’s members. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Prompt:

Is fear holding you back from living your fullest life and being truly self expressed? Can you be happy being anything less than who you really are? (Author: Lachlan Cotter)

Fearless Faith

Change is constant: seasons come and go, life ends, fear is temporary, and time is fleeting, so I flow on fearless faith. To hold on to anything too long and too tight is worthless and lifeless. When I’m asleep I have dreams and when I’m awake I try to reach my dreams. To try means one day I might stumble, tumble and fail, and the next day as long as my legs don’t fail me, I get up and return to reaching my dreams. That’s who I am.

I understand how temporary so much in life is including the breaths I take on earth. Therefore, I listen more to my inner voice of fearless faith and less to that voice of fear.

One World, One Tribe

To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, that is genius.  – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Prompt:  What is burning deep inside of you? If you could spread your personal message RIGHT NOW to 1 million people, what would you say? (Author: Eric Handler)

Know Others

My burning message:  know others.  Through knowing others, it becomes easier to see our commonalities and understand our differences.  To know leads to understanding and understanding opens the opportunity for friendships and love to flourish.

To know starts with exposure.  It means traveling and seeing beyond the comfort of one’s cocoon, community or eyesight.  It’s seeing the faces of others, hearing their stories, knowing their histories, and accepting their differences.

As we know others more we move closer to knowing ourselves and realizing we’re all part of one tribe made up of many, many people trying to do the same thing—trying to come alive and live.

The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word, because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Prompt: What is ‘too scary’ to write about? Try doing it now. (Author: Mary Jaksch)

Writing About Self

I write about people, places and politics.  I write about my views and visions on social issues, movies, culture, faith and communications.  I write letters, poetry, stories, speeches and essays.   I write, but I can’t write about myself.   Why?  Mine is a fear of exuding too much hubris and too little humility.   While I believe my writings don’t have to be about me, I have been taught that the most authentic writing is about what one knows best.  Clearly, I know myself pretty well.  But I often wonder whether others—strangers—are really interested in knowing me?  So my comfort zone and my self-confidence allows me to focus more on others and less on myself in both my writings and my life.

Biographies and autobiographies are abundant.  And Twitter and Facebook make it easy to define, describe and delineate every aspect of one’s self in writing.  Living means most have seen much, heard more and traveled enough journeys to tell stories, share histories or offer personal insights about themselves using the written word.  I find that hard to do. Yet, I’m tackling my fear in writing this post and participating in this 30-day effort because the daily challenges center around writing about self.