The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.
Plutarch
A mind is a terrible thing to waste we were told when we were children. We nodded our heads and yet we forgot the warning and instead wrapped our mind unimportant facts and figures and mind numbing but entertaining distractions.
We also bought into the idea that our mind needs to be filled. We bought into the idea that food for thought can only be found in school, that somehow the answers to the deepest questions in the universe lie in a doctorate degree, and that wisdom is not a passionate lover.
Wisdom might be the greatest love of our life, that does not contain human characteristics. It is meant to be kindled and not filled. It is meant to be pursued and not waited on. Wisdom requires you to work and sweat, otherwise it will look for someone else, someone who will not take it for granted.
You have to begin with the a priori assumption that you were born for a reason. You have to presume that the astronomically mind boggling odds of you being here instead of someone else insists on your contribution. It testifies to your greatness.
I know it doesn’t feel like that at times. At times it feels we are nothing more than a mosquito. Living long enough to procreate, make people itch, and become food so that something more important can do something wonderful with their lives. But those feelings of inadequacy are wrong, and they don’t have to dominate your life if you don’t want them to. You have an opportunity to fight them by lighting the fire of your imagination and letting your dreams blaze within your heart.
You can get a lot of things in school, but you cannot teach passion or help someone want to chase their dreams. That comes from within. It is the one room that only we can enter. A room which contains a fireplace only we can light and kindle the fire that effects the rest of our life.
Nobody is going to do it for you and nobody is going to pick you to be great.
Nobody can do it for you. You have to do it for yourself. They have their own greatness to light on fire and it’s not that they don’t want to but they can’t. They can only blaze their dreams so brightly that it gives you a moment of pause to ask why your own fire burns so dimly and what it will take to change that.
Everything you need to be great and get what you want out of life is already here. There is nothing you lack, although you may not have it in the intensity or measure you desire. But that doesn’t mean you can’t get there. It doesn’t mean that if you keep adding fuel to the fire, that you can’t be where you want to be.
And in the meantime if you are not where you desire, help those in that are in need, and help them get what they desire. Think of them and lend them your helping hand. Help to fawn their flames of success. There is much satisfaction and joy in helping others.
Don’t get discouraged. Help others and your day will surely come.
It will burn bright. It will burn warm.
It will burn glorious.
