Find Your Instrument and Play!

Stop keeping your thoughts and ideas to yourself! To begin, you should know something about me. For most of my life I bought into the American culture of individualism. Even then, my core being was yelling at me that we are all interdependent and connected. But I still filtered everything through the paradigm of the almighty individual. I repeatedly refused requests to share my thoughts, ideas, and words with the masses.  I refused to share with more than one person at a time.  

However, jumping into the arena has required that I reaffirm and rely on my talents; and for me that means sharing, collaborating, and contributing with the collective. My pre-arena self would say, “these thoughts are mine and I only find joy in sharing them one-on-one.”   Well today I’m here to say that sharing with the whole world, whether in writing, words, or actions is essential not only for individual growth, but also for the human race.       

Let’s start with just one person.  Of course sharing with everyone, as I mentioned in Let the Show Begin, requires letting go of the need for the illusion of control, courage, and vulnerability. But even beyond that, sharing requires a new level of introspection. For me, I connect with and relate to others easily so I can quickly grasp their nature and allow them to see characteristics about themselves.  I have found that most of us really like taking personality tests.  But why? Probably because it gives us that rare insight into who we are and maybe why we act and think in our own particular way.  Well, that is what I do.  

On a very simplistic level, I am a walking personality test.  Writing about and sharing my thoughts has reaffirmed my talents.  Which has motivated me to spend even more time working with people, helping them to see their own potential and make positive changes in their lives.  As an added bonus, just by sharing, all the ideas I have been examining and the paradigms I have assimilated over my life have became clearer, and my desire to learn has risen to new levels. I have become an an epiphany addict. Just by sharing we become more in-tune with ourselves. 

So, yay!  I am growing, learning, helping people, and full of joy…yada, yada, yada. I am truly pumped, but seriously, how is that good for the human race as a whole?  A thought or idea held by one person and not shared is like a tree in a pot - it can only grow to the size of the pot. Right?   Check this out...I am watching a web clip by Jason Silva, where he shares the concept that ideas can have sex (originally presented by Matt Ridley). What? Did I say have sex? Yep. Matt Ridley says that, “human progress has been the meeting and mating of ideas to make new ideas. It’s not important how clever individuals are; what really matters is how smart the collective brain is.” For the human race to actually solve the difficulties we are currently facing, we must give birth to new ideas and new paradigms or we will become stagnant and perish. The sharing of ideas allows each of us to take them and give birth to new ideas, essential ideas, ground shaking ideas. And it is with these ideas that the human race will flourish.  

So we are all collaborators in the gigantic project known as the human race. The human race is like a giant symphony and the music holds more depth of soul and becomes more magical, as we all pick up our own instrument and play. So go forth and FIND YOUR INSTRUMENT AND PLAY!  We need you.