It’s astonishing to me that nine years after leaving my office job in London to find out who I was and whether, as my intuition was strongly suggesting, there was more to life than working to survive, I still occasionally find myself feeling a little bit naughty for following the path of my heart and stepping ever more fully into doing what I love.
That just goes to show how deeply embedded the cultural conditioning and beliefs are that it’s unreasonable and unrealistic to expect that the work you do over the course of your life can be something that doesn’t feel like work at all but rather a path of joyful service.
It’s astonishing to me that nine years after starting my first blog, at a time when I was coming across lots of other blogs about finding and following your passion(s) and meeting all sorts of people who had either already exited the ‘reasonable and realistic’ world, or who were on the verge of doing so, that it is still very much not the norm for people to be encouraged to find the path in life that is true to their own hearts.
It’s astonishing to me that I should, and that anyone should, still feel like they’re doing something naughty, wrong, bad, rebellious, even lazy, by stepping out of work that completely drains them of energy and pursuing that which energises and uplifts their soul.
And you know what happens when you feel like you’re being a little bit naughty, like a five-year old sneaking an ice-cream from the freezer for breakfast whilst mum’s not looking? Well, you eat the ice-cream, but you eat it as quickly as possible, all the while nervously looking over your shoulder to see if mum’s coming to find you out!
So as far as work’s concerned, if you’re following the path of your heart, having stepped out of our society’s rather strange idea of what’s normal, but still feeling that you’re not really allowed to be doing what you’re doing, it’s hard to totally, fully, completely step into your true path because you’re always looking over you shoulder expecting someone to be coming to get you and give you a good spanking for daring to do that most terrible and evil of things…work you love!
Doing what you love is not naughty, selfish, wrong, bad, lazy or any other negative word you might come up with and I hope that one day this very idea will seem ludicrous to us all.
Doing what we love is natural. But like so many elements of our lives in this modern time, we have strayed a long way indeed from all that is natural. We can’t expect to create a more peaceful, just, loving, harmonious, beautiful world by continuing to forcibly and unhappily squeeze ourselves into the systems that have created the issues we have today.
As we remember and return to the natural ways of life, including shining our light through doing what is joyous to us, we revive our own souls and in so doing, play our part in reviving our suffering world.
Now, did someone say something about ice-cream?!
Love and courage,
Leah