The other day my friend Angie sent me an e-mail, and I always love getting e-mails from Angie. She has great ideas, for one thing. And when I read her writing, I can hear her soft South Carolina accent in every word. It never fails to make me smile.
Anyway. Back to the e-mail. Here's part of what she wrote:
I believe we are bound by the universal nature of our personal stories. By sharing them, we inspire, we entertain, we connect. We learn, we grow. We realize that our flaws and our screw ups make us more normal than we thought. Our secret hopes and dreams suddenly seem possible.
She writes about a friend and fellow blogger who invited her to answer five questions - and while she plans to answer them one by one on her blog this week, she has sent the invitation out into the world as well. "I saw it as an opportunity to try something here that I've wanted to try for a long time," she writes. "And that's build a community of shared stories."
"A community of shared stories." Bloggers do that so well, I think. We share our stories, our beliefs, our hopes and dreams with the wide world. And in doing so, we definitely learn and grow, are comforted and encouraged, supported and inspired. Even though Angie and I are a generation apart in age we share the same vision about the importance of personal stories.
But I'm going to tell you a truth here...when I read today's question, I heaved a big sigh. Here's the question -
What is one thing you’d like to accomplish (professionally or personally) in the next year?
If I'm honest today (and since we're telling our personal stories I'm going to be brutally honest)...I'm tired of trying to accomplish things.
I'm also tired of thinking about trying to accomplish things.
This year I want to simply LIVE.
I want to soak up every minute of sunshine that God allows me to feel.
I want to savor every word of every book I read.
I want to kiss my Grandson's silky smooth cheek nine hundred million times.
I want to sit on the back step and watch my little dog come racing up the yard with his tail flying like a banner in the breeze.
I want to listen to my mother tell me stories about growing up with all her cousins and the games they used to play in the blue Kentucky grass.
This year I want the soundtrack of my life to be simple folk songs with singable melodies, not three-part inventions or finger twisting toccata's.
This year I want the epigram of my life to be a Mary Oliver poem, not a Tolstoy novel.
This year I want to just BE.
Happy. Yes.
Alive. Yes.
True to myself.
Yes.
Let's see if I can accomplish that.
How about you? What's your story? To join in Angie's initiative to create a community of shared stories, go here and add your link to the chain.
