I woke up one morning feeling very unmotivated. I just could not find any good reason to do much of … well … anything. Usually I have all sorts of ideas of what I might like to do now, but that particular now, I simply had nothing. Something was simply … missing.
I thought for a bit, trying to identify what I was missing. It took me a while, but I finally realized what I was missing. I had lost my inspiration. I am not sure where it went, but it was simply gone. Think as much as I would like, I simply could not find any inspiration. I spent the whole day looking for it, yet it completely eluded me. It seemed I did actually have something that I needed to do. The next day I set off in search of my lost inspiration.
As I often do on such journeys, I let my feet wander as they would. After a bit, I came across a Man of Faith. He greeted me with a smile, as he went about doing a building project. I complimented his progress, and asked “Where do you find your inspiration?”
His answer (as I probably should have guessed) “God of course. When I lose my place, all I need to do is pray, and inspiration fills me.”
This made sense, but I am still reluctant to let a being that I am not sure actually exists make my decisions for me, so I moved on. Soon I came across my friend, the Starving Artist. He was fully absorbed in the work of art he was painting. I caught his attention, and asked, “Where do you find your inspiration?”
He shrugged. “I am never sure. It just comes to me at times. This time I received my inspiration from that brick over there.” I looked at the brick. It just looked like a brick to me. I thanked him, and moved on. I encountered many different people, from many different walks of life. I asked them all the same question, and got variations of the same answers. God, random things, or in some cases specific things. Yet I did not find inspiration in anything that others did. I was starting to wonder if maybe I had lost it for good.
I headed back home, wondering how I would manage without inspiration. Just when I was losing hope, I saw my Friendly Neighborhood Wise Man, standing, staring at a wall and laughing. Just the man I needed! So I went to him and after exchanging a friendly greeting, I said, “I seem to have lost my inspiration. Where can I find it again?”
He laughed his laugh and smiled his smile, and then pointed right where he had been staring. “Right there my boy!” I looked where he indicated, but all I saw was a wall. There was some dirt, and a few marks of wear, but still it was just a wall. Seeing my confusion, he laughed some more and pointed off to something on my right. “It is also there. And there. and there. and quite a bit there too.” As he said this, he kept pointing to indeterminate things. I thought back on the answers I had received earlier in my journey, and what he was telling me now. I started to get an inkling what he was saying. With a twinkle in his eye, he said, “Why is it you so often look for that which you already have?” and then vanished … his laugh echoing off into the distance.
With my own laugh, I suddenly got it.
