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"Living a Meaningful Life"
© 2003 Stuart Goldsmith
I believe that each person is a very special, unique
individual.
I also believe that everyone has a passion - if only they
could discover it.
And let me state one final belief: I believe that if you
will only follow your passion - your dream - then everything
will be all right. It will work out.
You'll make enough money to live on, perhaps even get rich,
but more importantly you'll have a joy-filled and truly
meaningful life.
The alternative is to live a life like our primitive
ancestors - grueling, desperate, toil-filled days devoid of
meaning other than brute survival.
The difference is that they had no choice. You do.
Now I want to say a word about 'meaningful.'
Do you, like me, equate the words 'meaningful' and 'dream'
with something hugely important; of tremendous significance
to mankind?
For example, do you think that a dream in order to be
meaningful has to be something like this?:
- Invent antigravity.
- Invent faster than light travel.
- Write a book which will profoundly change the lives of
all six billion people on the planet.
- Create a world-changing philosophy.
- Eradicate poverty, disease and hunger from the world.
- Overthrow the government, and start an entirely new
political system invented by you.
- Write a series of symphonies which make Mahler and
Mozart look like amateurs.
- Climb every mountain; ford every stream; follow every
rainbow.
In other words, are you trapped, like I was, by the belief
that your 'meaningful dreams' have to be grandiose, or they
are not worth pursuing? Do you believe that small dreams are
for small people and that only giant dreams are worth
having?
If so, what on earth are we to make of dreams like this?
"I was a cost control accountant for IBM. One day I was driving
through the countryside on my way to a sales meeting. Suddenly,
about half a mile away, I saw a broken down windmill.
To this day, I don't know what happened, but something about
that windmill called to me. As though guided by a will other
than my own, I turned off the road and drove down the bumpy
track leading to the mill.
It was completely deserted, and dilapidated. Using my mobile
telephone, I cancelled my meeting. I don't know what
possessed me. I had never cancelled a meeting before except
for serious reasons such as ill health. Little was I to know
that this was the most important cancellation of them all.
At that moment I knew I wanted to own that mill and restore
it to full working order.
Of course, it was crazy. I had a responsible job, paying a
good salary. I knew nothing about windmills. Literally
nothing. Correction: I knew that they went round and round,
and somehow ground corn into flour. But at that moment I
found my passion in life. To cut a long and difficult story
short (for I will not pretend it was easy), I located the
owner of the mill and purchased it from him. I gave up my
job and career and moved with my family into a house near
the mill. We spent two years restoring it, and now run it as
a working windmill and museum.
I'll never get rich running the mill, but we make enough to
make ends meet. The important thing is that the last two
years have been the happiest of my life.
Perhaps I won't always own the mill. It's possible I might
get tired of it one day. But that doesn't matter. By then
I'll have another dream and I will know that it is possible
to follow your dreams and to succeed. From where I am
sitting, I cannot even begin to understand how I spent so
many years as an accountant. It seems utterly fantastic to
me now."
This man is not going to save the world, cure all known
diseases, or eradicate poverty. He found a dream which was
his unique destiny or vision, and had the guts to follow it.
His dream was entirely insignificant on a global, or even
local scale. He did not change anybody's life apart from his
own.
What were the needs which this dream fulfilled?
I can only guess. Perhaps he needed to create something with
his bare hands. Perhaps he needed to control something in
its entirety - be responsible for all of the cogs, rather
than just be a cog himself. Perhaps he wanted to earn his
living in an honest way, and saw accountancy as basically a
dishonest profession. Only he could tell you.
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