What is my unique contribution to the world?
I relistened to a podcast by Elizabeth Gilbert interviewing Brene Brown. You are likely familiar with the author Elizabeth Gilbert. She wrote Eat, Pray, Love…and a handful of other titles. Recently, Gilbert wrote Big Magic — the next title on my reading list. It’s a book about creativity, how we think about our work and why and how we do it.
Everyone this side of the world is making dinners, testing recipes and emptying dishwashers (thank God for the dishwasher, and the little ones emptying it). As homeschool moms, most everyone is teaching their little ones to estimate to the nearest ten and calculating the surface area of parallelograms at some point. They’re listening to kids read out loud and also reading books together in the evening. There are extracurriculars to shuttle to and homeschool co-ops to plan for. Then in the evenings, there are husbands and wives reading into the evening, or catching up on a Netflix series, after cleaning up the kitchen, playing a couple games with the kids and tucking them to bed. And this is all good and satisfying.
We all can learn to cook and clean, read a book to our kiddos and figure out how to teach spelling words or divide fractions, but what leaves our unique stamp on the world? What is just us manifesting into the world?
On first thought, creativity is watercolours, oil painting, chipping human form out of a mass of marble. I’ve never done these things (with any saleable skill anyway). I have designed and planned two houses though. I’ve designed and built and maintained many gardens. I’ve organized overseas and summer trips for six. I’ve organized an education for four unique kiddos. I’ve written plots for books, short stories, and tried my hand at butchering poetry.
We each have an opportunity to share our creation with others, before we leave this creation. What is yours?
“Do that which is assigned to you, and you cannot hope too much or dare too much.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
My daughter and I started a small business creating jewelry and art to sell. it’s nothing huge, but we get local business and it’s fun to turn our creative ideas into a small income. 🙂 Most importantly – we enjoy doing it! We’ve taken our creative joy and made it into something we can both share and build with. I hope it leaves her with lifelong memories of exploring your creative talents!