What’s Knocking? What question guides my life?

December 6, 2015

What’s Knocking at the Door of my Consciousness? What Question Guides my Life?

I share this post in response to a series of 12 prompts provided by visionaries within a community of business artists. You may also participate if you choose by visiting Tracking Wonder’s Quest2016 page.

Your Quest2016 Prompt today:

From Visionary: Jonathan Fields @jonathanfields

You wake up to discover a knock at your door. A wealthy uncle you barely knew has passed and left you a fortune. It’s more than enough to live out your days in glorious splendor, but there is a condition. To be eligible to collect, you must commit your full-time working energies to the pursuit of an answer to a single question of your choosing for the next 12 months.

You are welcome to continue that pursuit after the year ends, for years or decades if it warrants, but you must remain fully focused on seeking the answer until the last minute of the 365th day. A minute shorter, the entire inheritance goes to your annoying and equally long lost cousin, Philly.

What is your question? What is knocking at the door of your consciousness?

Every time I ponder this prompt, tears come to my eyes. It is likely these tears are a message from my soul, urging me to pay attention. During this past year, I have been literally and figuratively wandering. We sold our home, cars, furniture, and put the rest in storage at the beginning of the year. Since then, my husband Jim Lockard and I have traveled all over Europe and are currently living for a month in Oaxaca, Mexico. We will travel to California and Hawaii before the end of the year. We may spend some time in Oregon the 1st quarter of 2016, then most likely return to Europe.

Back to the question at hand. Which question must I work towards answering in 2016?

My good friend and colleague Cindy Henson provided me some inspiration with her answer to this prompt. Thank you Cindy!  In 2007, I defined a personal Passion & Purpose statement in a workshop conducted by my colleages at CEO2. Here is a recently revised version of my P&P Statement:

Passion: Singing Our Song

Purpose:

With spiritual vision, brilliance, and clarity,
I nurture and inspire myself and others
To powerfully express the music of our souls,
So that we may create, care, learn, and live courageously together.

2015-10: The author, performing with a quartet in an amateur chamber music master class. Cleveland, OH

So, here is my two part question for myself in 2016:

What song am I singing so that the world benefits? What am I doing to nurture and inspire myself and others to powerfully express the music of our souls?

As I begin to answer these questions, I wish to clarify that each of us has a song to sing (e.g., story about yourself, key message you present to others, work that you do in your life)  and our souls yearn to express our unique music. You might want to ask yourself, what song are you singing now, and what song do you really want to sing?  I’m asking myself these same questions. More about this question in future posts.