Driven

What drives you?
When you are on the engine, what gets you to spend hours, days, nights, and years achieving your goals, mastering your work, honing your craft. The grind, the hustle, the hard work towards a goal or with intent, the ambition to achieve, to accomplish, to master and finesse a craft or a job, the rush to go against all odds, the stamina to make the impossible possible, reaching new highs because let's face it - the sky is NO limit when you are driven. Those are all come hands in hands with being DRIVEN.
But what is it that drives you?

Some call it Grit.
​Some call it Purpose.
To some, it is a Calling.
To others - the 'Why'

Sure, sometimes it is the limiting beliefs that drive us. Like the need for some of us to prove ourselves, or to make a name for ourselves, to be validated, to be the children our parents want us to be, to fit in the mold of society's expectations, to be seen, to 'be a contender!'

But when we tap into our purpose beyond our limited beliefs - we are driven in a different way. There is a different essence to be driven by a force of a calling, a purpose, a grit.

It took me a long time to understand what it is that drives me to spend hours on end embodying characters, people watching, analyzing the psychology of imaginary characters, going to the depths of the emotions of others so other others can feel something. As an actor and writer, or a storyteller as I prefer to call it - what I ultimately do and work in is the practice of EMPATHY. I have spent my whole life practicing the arts of embodying others and creating others - which is a great lesson in empathy. But Empathy is more than a lesson. It's an absolutely necessary tool, and to me - it's a purpose. It's a calling. It's my 'why.'

When I think 'what would make the world a better place' - I don't hesitate when I answer: 'If empathy would grow substantially. If people would see each other not as separate - but as themselves.'

The Mayans greet each other by saying 'Hello, myself.'
I always wonder - how does a society change when its inhabitants use empathy in the language like that? Or if the society highlights and prioritizes empathy and understanding? Or when parents teach their children a less comparative mindset like so many do in our over-achieving western society, and rather prioritize teaching how to grow in empathy and understanding at a young age? I don't know  the answers for that. But I know somewhere deep in my gut... that if we understand each other, and if we feel what others feel - the world could be kinder, could be happier, could be wiser.
I'll end these thoughts on a late Thursday night, by greeting you all with:
                                                                      Hello, myself!