From Pain to Hope

I am going to start doing different topics on different days of the week, much like radio programs. On Mondays, I am going to be telling my story as I am moving from one who focused on growth, to pain, and now hope. I emphasized these three things not only in my own life but in how I interacted with others. 

I had been having a long stretch of no motivation, wondering why anything was worth while, and general existentialism. After much prayer, some time in the sun, conversations with friend, and watching the following Ted talk, I realized something rather important. For the past four years I had been focusing on pain. I would ask others questions about how they were, and find bits and pieces of a story, hone in on the pain and start digging. I got rather good at it. 

Unfortunately, that was in stark contrast to the hope and motivation I had been sharing years previously. When I was in and taught martial arts, my primary goal was to share the hope of a better life. Constant improvement and moving forward. I was the example for others to follow. 

Then after the divorce of a close mentor I began to seek and look for pain in others, as I ran away from my own. When I realized this was causing problems, mostly in emotional connections with women, I was left with nothing, no hope, and no pain even though as said by Three Days Grace said, “I would rather feel pain than nothing at all” 

Then I watched this video, (don’t read the transcript, watch the whole thing)

This changed my whole outlook. While watching, my mind was running and racing through past ways of thinking, how he came to think this way, how it compares to my own thought and interests. What drew me to Benjamin Zander the most was that he was using what he loved, music, to put a light in peoples eyes. Before I had used martial arts. The creativity of how he strung together stories, music, and life lessons of moving forward inspire me. So I have made a commitment, to work to inspire hope and love creatively. Through whatever one is interested in, we can learn to combine our interests with helping people, we can truly be engaged in this life and the people we love.