What Are We Waiting For?

Do you have ideas that you don't follow up on?

Honestly, this can refer to anything and everything - from our small everyday notions and ideas to those that could have a larger impact on our life. 

Now, I would add that not all of the ideas and thoughts we come up with have merit, but what about those that do?

In Elizabeth Gilberts book Big Magic (pages 42-54), she talks about how she came up with a book idea set in the Amazon. She began her research but due to circumstances put it aside for a couple of years. When she decided to resume working on it her creativity and ideas for it had vanished.

Then one day she was talking with a new friend, a fellow author named Ann Patchett. Imagine her surprise as she learned that Ann was working on a new novel set in the Amazon. The major themes and characters were very similar to her abandoned novel.

She wrote "...we each counted backward on our fingers, trying to determine when I had lost the idea and when she had found it. Turns out, those events had occurred around the same time. In fact, we think the idea might have officially transmitted on the day we met." p.53

Her theory is that ideas that come to us are not necessarily random; if you don't act on them the idea will go and find someone else. Have you ever had an idea you didn't act on and then discovered that someone else did the thing that you were 'going to do?' 

During the pandemic so much was put on hold that wasn't of our own choosing. Just before the lockdowns started, people began clearing the land next to us to build a house. Of course it was delayed over and over again.

Every so often we would see someone there as if walking the outline of where the house would be built. My husband talked to them on one of those days. They told him they were planning to build their dream house. We were very surprised a few months later to see a For Sale sign appear. 

We didn't know them but later learned the husband had passed away after an unexpected illness. My husband now often sees the wife and their dog walk by the empty lot, always stopping to take a look, before continuing on their way. When he told me that and whenever I think of it, my heart fills with compassion and empathy for what she has lost. 

Sometimes despite our best efforts, that dream, those ideas, can be taken away from us. (It happened to me with the business I closed in 2012.)

Sometimes its an external force that stops us from moving forward, but that's not always the case.Sometimes it's simply our own self-doubt and lack of belief in what's possible. (Also me with that same business.)

Sometimes I think of that couple and it reminds me how fleeting our dreams can be.

I'm as guilty of not following the path to my dreams and ideas as anyone. 

But there are other areas in my life where I'm getting better at acting on my ideas. Remember my 'making do' blog from several months ago? (You can read it here) That's something I'm remembering to remind myself of when the 'making do' isn't serving anyone in our house. It's opened up new ways of thinking and believing.

Dreams are possible. Ideas can work. I’ve had it happen.

So what do you think?

Can this be the year that we actually 'do the thing' - whatever that may be? And then pick another 'thing' and do that too?

Trust in ourselves? Trust in our ideas? Trust we can do it? Just get started?

I say Yes! Are you with me? What are We waiting for?

As my husband said to me after reading this - "Sometimes you just have to take the bull by the horns and do it!"

I'll see you on the path.

Namaste, Glenda