{"id":1116,"date":"2011-03-03T18:30:43","date_gmt":"2011-03-03T18:30:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/changeleadersnetwork.com\/?p=1116"},"modified":"2011-03-30T00:46:07","modified_gmt":"2011-03-30T00:46:07","slug":"your-mark-on-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/changeleadersnetwork.com\/your-mark-on-the-world","title":{"rendered":"Your Mark on the World"},"content":{"rendered":"
I just started reading Crossing to Safety<\/em>, by Wallace Stegner. Perhaps you\u2019ve read it, or others by him? He is one of my favorite authors. His prose and wisdom cuts to the bone and penetrates the heart. <\/a><\/p>\n This passage by the narrator in the book touched me deeply because it speaks to where I am currently living in myself:<\/p>\n \u201cThough I have been busy, perhaps over busy, all my life, it seems to me now that I have accomplished little that matter, that the books have never come up to what was in my head, and that the rewards \u2013 the comfortable income, the public notices, the literary prizes, and the honorary degrees \u2013 have been tinsel, not what a grown man should be content with. Whatever happened to the passion we had to improve ourselves, live up to our potential, leave a mark on the world? Our hottest arguments were always about how we could contribute<\/em>.<\/p>\n \u201cWhatever happened to the passion we had to improve ourselves, live up to our potential, leave a mark on the world?\u201d<\/em> What a wonderful question. Mine has not died, and in fact, burns hotter today inside me than ever. But in many ways, I have kept it at bay, in a closet, hidden from people who might otherwise ridicule it. I know that others would not understand this about me because they only witness my outer deeds, but I know that I have been holding back.<\/p>\n This past year has been one of great inner work for me, confronting many of my ego\u2019s ways in which I hide from expressing the fullness of who I am and what I stand for in the world. I have been confronting in myself how I play it safe so as not to seem too farfetched, too non-ordinary. But truth-be-told: ordinary sucks, and the world does not need me in that pared down version of my Self. Look where ordinary has gotten us. We are in trouble, as both a species and a planet. Our common way of thinking, behaving and acting has us killing each other and the biology that is our home at an unprecedented rate.<\/p>\n