The DAILY SPARK Blog

LIVING WIDE OPEN

I will not die an unlived life. 

I will not live in fear

of falling or catching fire.

I choose to inhabit my days,

to allow my living to open me,

to make me less afraid,

more accessible,

to loosen my heart

until it becomes a wing,

a torch, a promise.

I choose to risk my significance,

to live so that which came to me as seed

goes to the next as blossom,

and that which came to me as blossom,

goes on as fruit.

Poem by Dawna Markova from her book: I WILL NOT DIE AN UNLIVED LIFE  Reclaiming Purpose and Passion
 

REFLECTION:

  • Are you living?
  • How can you inhabit your days more fully?
  • What does “risking your significance” look like for you?
  • Seed-blossom-fruit: where are you in this process of your being?  What is your next step to being more fully alive?

BE IN THE FIRST GROUP

My grandfather once told me that there were two kinds of people:  those who do the work and those who take the credit.  He told me to try to be in the first group; there was much less competition.

Quote by Indira Gandhi

REFLECTION:

  • What group are you in?
  • Are you willing to do the work? 
  • What does that look like?

BEING VULNERABLE

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.

The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again,

because there is not effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause;

who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly…”

Quote by Theodore Roosevelt’s speech “Citizenship in a Republic” delivered at the Sorbonne in Paris, France on April 23, 1910.

REFLECTION:

  • Are you in the arena of life?
  • Are you allowing the “critics” in the  stands to point out your shortcomings?
  • Is there a worthy cause you are willing to get into the arena for … to dare greatly?
  • What is it?  Take a first step into the arena today.