Being a healthcare practitioner, I often have people asking for my opinion or advice on a wide variety of topics ranging from “what should I eat” to “what do you think of vaccination.” It comes with the territory, and I truly enjoy sharing my knowledge with people.
Then we decided to go through our pregnancy with a midwife and use a birthing center for delivery.
Open the floodgates. I was now treading water in a sea of questions.
Nothing prepares you to hear those words, much less utter them yourself. You know those moments that you’ve seen in the movies about time standing still? It happens. S**t gets real. Real good, but real in a way you have never experienced in life before.
OK Cole, pick your jaw up off the floor
Such was my 6:30 am wake up call on October 29th, 2011. My wife was anxiously trying to get me out of bed to come see something, and like a bear coming out of hibernation I was resisting the waking world. As I stumbled out of bed, protesting the whole way, she presented me with the above picture – in full stereoscopic 3D of the real world.
BAM! Ton of bricks, meet Cole.
This year marked the 25th anniversary of The Legend of Zelda, my absolute favorite game series as a child. It feels weird to me that Zelda is now a veteran in the relatively young medium of video games, and children are still discovering it for the first time 25 years later. Here is my story of my time with Zelda, and what it taught me.
It was 1988 in a Wal-Mart in the middle of midwestern nowhere that I first saw it, and was hooked at the title screen (in my defense, it had a sword on it and I was six years old). Standing at the demo kiosk, I heard to the now classic theme music (click here to listen while you read) and could only wonder what adventure awaited when I pushed start. Little did I know how the series and I would grow together and the many lessons it would teach me along the way. I know we all remember this one, as it was in the first cave on the first screen.
Near the end of the year when I’m taking stock of how I spent my life over the past 12 months, it helps to have inspiration to see the big picture. It is easy for me to get lost in the details and goals (especially ones not met), but remembering my mission and the why behind what I’m doing brings it back into perspective.
This excerpt from Theodore Roosevelt’s Citizenship in a Republic speech has always been both uplifting and motivating to me, I hope it will be to you as well.
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 no 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 fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. [buy this as a poster]
truth
Devote yourself to something great, shed the cynicism of the world, don’t be afraid to begin, fail a time or two, learn from it, and build character. Do these things next year and I promise your life will be different, mine has been.
What are you striving for? Share in the comments, I’d love to hear from you.
How do we determine which way to go in our lives? There is an innate understanding of a ‘master plan,’ but too often we feel unplugged, unaware of our place in it. Without discovery or pursuit of our role, our “destiny,” we tend to inflate ourselves up to feel bigger than we are – to try to feel important and meaningful in some way. It is trying to fill a void by becoming narcissistic.
I think that in discovering our place in God’s plan, we become humbled by how small we really are. Thankfully, that liberates us from lying to ourselves through self-aggrandizing, and changes our perspective away from our conception of time [to eternity].
Everyone seems to be searching for an “authentic” experience, in fact, Generation Y is all about authenticity. A chance for something to happen to them, for a story to be made, for a pivotal moment that shifts their paradigm. We as humans are happiest when we are living congruently and consciously, though this is an uncommon state. There is a great disconnect happening within people that is keeping them from having an enjoyable, authentic, passionate life. This disconnect is caused by societal pressures, stress, and subluxations that overwhelm your body into a state of defensive adaptation where it survives on a sub-conscious level.
Living consciously is bringing awareness to everything in your life (actions, values, purposes, goals) and being fully present in each moment. It requires you to create a purpose by intelligent design, and to pursue it regardless of pleasure or pain. This is where the authentic experience occurs.
