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Find Your Passion in Life and You Will Come Alive - Fence-Building on Esperanza
"A successful life is one that is lived through understanding and pursuing one's own path, not chasing after the dreams of others." Chin-Ning Chu My passion is creating value for others. A quick story to illustrate. I was 21, had just returned from a 2-year service and teaching mission.
I didn't have a whole lot to do yet, and so I found myself scrambling to find creative ways to spend my time. I don't remember all the how's and what's, but my dad and I decided to build a fence in the backyard. As I recall, I went to my dad to get a list of all the materials that we would need. "Make sure the fence boards are y long, and make sure the posts are specially treated to expand and contract so they don't crack when the seasons change.
Get y type of cement, and make sure that you don't forget x." After getting everything we needed came the work. We hammered and nailed and screwed for 2 days straight. My dad's fence-building experience guided us throughout the project. One of the days my dad and I worked in the rain, but we were happy. We had already made up our mind that we would create this fence, and we weren't going to finish until it was done. Finally, we looked at what we had built. Beautiful. This fence was perfect. We looked at what we had done, and were pleased with the work.
The fence sloped perfectly down because of how we had measured and aligned the posts and boards throughout the process of building. This new wooden barrier was very sturdy throughout its 40 foot or-so span because we had taken special care to cement the posts individually and tested them to make sure they had dried correctly. The point of the story is this: My sense of accomplishment came because of what I had created -- that the thing I had made was good.
It would serve a useful purpose for my family. I was very pleased with that, and walked away feeling a very strong sense of accomplishment. Does that mean that I want to build fences for a living? Honestly, no. My passion is in technology, so that's where I'd prefer to build. But I look at the fence-building story as a metaphor for my life. I find that the times where I'm truly satisfied is when I'm building value for others, when I'm creating something useful for another person.
Where my efforts can have an impact for good on somebody else's life. "A successful life is one that is lived through understanding and pursuing one's own path, not chasing after the dreams of others." Chin-Ning Chu What's your passion? Your path? Have you found it? Are you pursuing it? Find out, and you will come alive. I know that I have. You might find it in something simple like building a fence. Pick this up in a feed? Go to the original article and make a comment.
