Having a Purpose

This post is a few months in the making. :) It was set in motion by a call I got from a lovely friend, who wanted to talk about a behavior her son frequently exhibits. He is autistic and seems to really enjoy shredding leaves. I didn't hear the phone ring, though, and she left a wonderful message, and at the end of the message she said that she just wanted to know that the leaf shredding had a purpose, but then she paused and questioned why she needed that. And at that moment I felt a zing. Both for her and for me, because feeling through that zing brought me to the realization that "lack of purpose" has been holding me back a lot in my life! That before I do anything, it needs to have a purpose. Or at least a purpose that others will recognize/accept so they won't accuse me of wasting my time. So many times I've had these strokes of inspiration about things I could create, but stop because they have no "purpose" (that I know of), no "acceptable outcome" other than the experience of creating, so I'll go into thinking how I can turn them into a product to be sold, and then I get overwhelmed by the whole selling aspect so I stop and never do anything. There are so many things that I feel so strongly in my heart that I need to do, that I need to create, but because the direction is coming from my heart (which speaks in feelings) and not my head (which speaks in words), if someone asks me WHY I am going to do or am doing something, I just have nothing to say. Which, as you can imagine, tends to go over real well with most parents and teachers. It isn't until recently that I've been feeling that it's okay to say "Because I feel like I need to", and most of the time I'm not even brave enough to say that. So I have a glorious, amazing feeling that is directing me towards something, and then I try to come up with justification that my head will accept, and I can't, so I do nothing. I just spin around and around and accomplish nothing other than suppressing what is trying to come through me and sticking with doing the "acceptable" things, like housework and cooking and doing things with my kids. Because, after all, I can't justify doing things that I WANT to do, that have no "value" when there are responsibilities to be done! But by the time I've finished those responsibilities, I have nothing left to create with. And then I start the next day over again at the same place, but feeling a bit more defeated every day.

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