That Certain Something Else

If you ever want to get inspired, watch any of the TED talks. It doesn’t matter which one I watch, I end up wanting to work with that person because their passion and drive emanates across the medium of video and touches the desires within me to cause change and transformation in this world.

When you listen to Pavarotti, when you watch Hamlet, when you hold an iPhone, see a photo of Rosa Parks, stand at the Washington Memorial, know a cancer survivor, or read about the death of a martyr, there is something else, something different about that person that separates them from average. Not that the average man and woman is devalued, but these people have gone through more than the average allocation of pressure to stand tall in the pages of someone’s history.

These are people who think differently. Who dare to achieve the great things that others only dream of. It is this daring drive, fueled by desire, that pushes them to live at a whole other level of life. Their thoughts have radically evolved past the victim mindedness that holds most people down, and they have come to realise that they can and must grasp what is within their potential or calling to lay hold of.

I have observed their strength comes from a single-minded obsession. They care not for frivolous things, but daily, out of a deep inner conviction, go again and again to the battle against themselves to grasp what is in their hearts to grasp. With different thinking comes different actions. They are not those who only enjoy change but those who create it, and as such these people do things others don’t do.

1. They read. They understand that they can stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before them, thereby extending their reach much, much farther.
2. They observe. They have become students of the details of life, the nuances of other’s actions, the way the world works. They have pen and paper at every meeting, they are not arrogant to think they know it all, and they take notes at church.
3. They write. Reading makes a broad man but writing makes an exact man. They write their thoughts down in order to sharpened their senses and clarify their observations into simple phrases and methods of explanation. This gives them the ability to communicate what others can only feel.
4. They challenge. They may compete with others, but their harshest competitor is themselves. They continually challenge themselves to do better than before, and to break the limitations that once held them at previous stations of life.
5. They empathise. They are acutely aware of those around them, and have a knack for knowing how others feel.
6. They lead. Whenever they look up, they see a trail of people behind them, because their actions light a path that others can follow. They live as one who examines every action under the criteria: is this what others who follow me should do?
7. They act. The biggest gap is not between the have and the have-not’s – it’s between the do and the do-not’s. They are doers of the Word, not hearers only.

There are two people who have modeled this for me. Firstly, my Pastor – Michael Meyers. And the second is the apostle Paul, who wrote the motto I live by:

Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:12-14)

I’ve got good examples to observe.