The time Adele agreed with my Counsellor 6

Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better.

Martin Luther King Jnr

Yesterday was weird. I had a counseling session and a concert all in one evening. I was challenged by my counselor to do the following:

Stop talking. start doing.
Stop thinking, start creating.
Stop playing it safe, start risking.
“What do I have to risk?” I sheepishly asked.
“Yourself” he said, looking me dead in the eye.

So let me get this straight? In order to accomplish all these grand plans I have been thinking about and talking about for the last year (okay five years), I have to start doing, creating, and risking myself in the process? My whole self? My love and my ideas and my pride and all the other thousands of emotions I feel a mile a minute? Okay then.

Okay then.

CUE ALL THE STUNNED EMOJIS!

The wide one, the one with the hands on the face, the one with an open mouth, and finally a combination of the guy upside down with his eyes rolled.
I wanted to leave his office. Firstly because it felt better and safer to just be thinking these ideas, creating them in my head rather than sharing them with the world. Because umm… world=scary haunted house, but my head=my mommas couch, eating chicken curry with naan.

Secondly, because he was right. And while the fear was rising up in the pit of tummy, an urgency was simultaneously rising in my heart to start doing, creating, risking.

With this small amount of new found knowledge, I ask you this…
What is that one thing you have already created in your head and heart space but not yet with your hands?
The weirdest part of my day was not hearing this truth, but going to the Adele concert right afterward. It was the words I had just heard put into action. I saw the beauty, change and difference risking it all can make. Thousands upon thousands of people heart-stirred, a chaotic community created in one night, a lyric that held the power to heal, all because someone chose to risk themselves, and their self-image, and their pain. All because someone chose to not just create something to help themselves, but had the audacity to think that what they had created could help others too.
It was humbling and inspiring all at once.

It takes courage to create something- an idea, a piece of art, a piece of cake, anything. Boldness and courage and a whole lot of gumption.

It takes selflessness to share your creation. A denying of your fears and insecurities. And where there is selflessness, there also lies love. A love for the one that benefits from your idea, or sees beauty in your art or was craving cake. A love so deep that you risk yourself in giving it. Also, a love so wide that it includes you in it….of course, you have something to share, to paint, to bake. You are all kinds of wonderful.

You see, creation shared forms community. And gosh, a community is good. Even if it is 65,000 people swarming into a stadium on a hot summer’s day to say ‘Hey, we like you, and this simple melody that you risked yourself to materialize, we dig that too’

Isn’t that what the world should be about? Showing up together, even if for just one person to say ‘we like you and that thing that only you can do’. History shows that showing up together changes things. Martin Luther King Jr put it like this…

Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better.

Let’s be audacious and kind together, dear friend.

Love,

Ria