I was re-reading This Time I Dance by Tama Kieves this week when I came across a passage that really rang true for me. I think it makes a great follow-on to my recent leap of faith post.
Tama is an ex-corporate lawyer turned creative writer and coach. She has this to say about following our dreams:
“Choose gloriously. Seize your wild want, not that freeze-dried, politically correct, mild want. Thinned-down desires douse the fire…Only the real dream has the power.
When I shelved law to write professionally, I plotted to temper and “practicalize” my inspired path. I buckled down to write magazine articles instead of skipping with my pen to the riverbanks and poppy fields of imagination. I figured it was more reasonable to choose journalism, saleable writing, over up-in-the-air, sallying-on sunbeams creative writing. And so came my downfall. Because my strategy was reasonable, not extravagantly divine.
…Without wild want… I did not have the energy to keep pitching stories to magazines and stories to myself about how this was really okay because it was sort of like creative writing and I was sort of living my dreams….When I finally allowed myself to write poetry, short stories, and the essays that would lead to this book, I experienced the power of devotion.
I know that once I stopped trying to fit what I wanted to do into some kind of real-world form, what I wanted to do sprouted urgent feathers and took flight.
What we hold back, holds us back. It’s too easy to quit when we don’t really want the prize. ..Submit to your heart’s most wondrous desire, even while you do not know how to translate this delicious nuisance into a career… you can move mountains if you are moved.”
I relate to the danger of the reasonable strategy. When I started off my transition to coaching, I took the safe route. Blessed with a typically British suspicion of the seemingly “flaky,” I couldn’t quite bring myself to embrace impractical-sounding concepts like following your passion. So I got a job with a management development consultancy even though I knew deep down that I wasn’t interested in the corporate arena. And of course the job completely failed to satisfy.
There is a world of difference between a pale imitation and the real thing. So don’t be tempted to settle for anything less than your dream in its full technicolour glory!
