I had some crazy wild dreams last night. I can hardly ever fully recount what my dreams are about, but last night they were a bit upsetting. And they have me thinking this morning about my life. What it is that my life is supposed to be about. Pretty sad that at age 52 I am still trying to figure that one out. Anyone else out there in the same boat? I bet there is.

Life is generally supposed to be about aspiration, right? Aspiring to be a doctor, a lawyer, a butcher, baker, or candlestick maker…and a successful one at that. After all, aspiration enables us to do what’s most important in life…live. Or is it?

One of the strongest and most satisfying emotions one can experience is not aspiration, but inspiration. I love to be inspired…to be moved deeply by a great speech, song, work of art, or book. Just a simple deed done out of a sense of sacrificial service to others can be deeply inspirational. I love that feeling. I love the feeling of being inspired. What’s even more, I love the thought of possibly being inspirational myself. I believe it is something truly worth aspiring to. Aspiring to be inspirational…now that gets my juices flowing.

Aspiring to be inspirational…now that gets my juices flowing.

But how? How can a ultra-ordinary and average guy like me be inspirational? Don’t I need talent to do so? Or at least good looks? Don’t I need a perfect career, wealth, intelligence or some ingredient that seems beyond my grasp? I guess the question becomes, can an average bloke like me possibly be inspirational?

I believe the answer lies in something I have ranted about excessively in this blog. I call it impact mindfulness. Now, what do I really mean by that? Well, I have explained that in other posts, but today I want to talk about what I believe is a requisite of what I will refer to from now on as Inspirational IM.

Truly inspirational IM, I believe, first and foremost requires freedom of thought. One cannot practice inspirational IM while limited in one’s capacity to think things through. I did a post a while back, quite a few years back actually, about some preacher in some small town in the southern U.S. who cajoled his congregation into having a Koran burning event. This certainly had an impact, albeit hardly an inspirational one. I would venture to surmise that this preacher had not really thought that action through very well. And he hadn’t thought it through because his mind was so closed that he didn’t even have the slightest capacity to do so. So, he proposed to engage in an act that is the antitheses of inspirational IM. This is an extreme example, but it serves to illustrate the point well.

So do events throughout history, like the Dred Scott decision of the Supreme Court, the Jim Crow laws of the reconstructed south, or, more recently, the decision that torture of prisoners of “war” was all of a sudden an okay way to obtain intelligence. None of those decisions were thought through very well, in my opinion. And unless one’s mind is freed from the shackles of preconceived notions of truth based on dubious sources, then one cannot hope to adequately think things through nor successfully practice inspirational IM.

unless one’s mind is freed from the shackles of preconceived notions of truth based on dubious sources, then one cannot hope to adequately think things through nor successfully practice inspirational IM.

I don’t want to get political here, but I have to provide one more example. And that is the right-wing political forces in the U.S. that seem to have their collective heads buried in the sand on the whole global warming issue? Why is that? Despite overwhelming science and actual real world evidence to the contrary, they choose to continue with this notion that global warming is some grand political hoax. And the impact is actually threatening the existence of the planet we live on (and of course us along with it).  Not at all what I would consider inspirational IM.

Back on point, I will conclude in answering the dilemma posed about my own life at the outset of this post. What do I want my life to be about, at least from this point forward? In short, inspirational IM. That is what I would like to aspire to. Because I believe that when you yourself practice IM, you inspire others to do so and they in turn are inspirational and the multiplier effect of that can be, well, inspirational on a world-changing level.

Now, that’s something for an ordinary joe like me to aspire to.