Do you spend much time around people whose creative energy and passion are irrepressible? They’re contagious. Regardless of the topic, you want to know more. Seeing them light up is magnetic, electrifying. You can feel it in the air, and it pulls you into a place where you want to be. It’s as though you can look into their souls and it leaves you wanting to know more. A dance ensues…..they share, you question, they feed on your interest, and you feed on their enthusiasm. A symbiotic moment-in-time.
Those conversations involve teaching, sharing, and storytelling, all wrapped into a burrito of goodness. Passions that are centered around a good cause aren’t just about the fundraiser, or the event, or the trip. Sure, those things get discussed, they are in the burrito, but the sauce of passion is always what really makes the flavor.
I was fortunate to be swept into this vortex recently, in the midst of my normal day. Do you ever have those moments? You’re walking along in your own mind, going about your usual, and then … WHOOSH …. something comes out of nowhere that is more powerful than you could have imagined?
I’d like to introduce you to my 90-year-old client, Patty, who still has more energy than I have on my good days. Her 4-foot 10-inch frame radiates energy that passes through this world-changing lives, one at a time. Have you ever read this quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson?
“To leave the world a bit better … to know that even one life has breathed easier because you have lived – that is to have succeeded.”
That’s Patty. She may not consciously live by this motto, but that’s she regardless. Let me tell you more. She’s done things like single-handedly open and run a gallery at her church, in a single room, with art on display. What the gallery really means to Patty is bringing beauty into the world and connecting people around it. The artist stories are shared in newsletters and through hosting events when friends, families, and artists gather to hear the stories of the artists, people dining around food that has a connection relevant to the art….on occasion she hosts the traveling artists in her home. She knows how they work, what drives them, and what their art is meant to depict. She talks about the art as though it lives, because, in her mind, it does.
After 30 some years someone else is now directing her gallery, so (of course) she’s kicking off a new initiative. Patty’s launched a church green team focusing on Fair Trade and food and forest. So the ripples begin again. “While a team’s efforts may at times seem small, never doubt the ripple effect of what is done,” says Patty’s Green Team. The start, the passion, the sharing and connecting. The burrito that brings people together.
