Category: dreams

career, change, dreams, friendship, risk

My Year of Hopefulness – Safety in Change

Christa Avampato

“It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.” ~ Alan Cohen

My friend, Rob, and I were talking about safety a few weeks ago. Rob talked to me about how we’ve conned ourselves into believing that a company, a job, can give us some feeling of security and stability when really it’s a house of cards. I’ve seen it happen to so many of my friends – they are cranking along in their jobs, exhibiting exceptional performance and results, and then the pink slip. Rob’s advice on my news of moving on: “You’ve done the hard part: making the choice to step outside the box that hems one in, and keeps one from dreaming bigger dreams…know you are supported from many quadrants. More as it goes…”

I emailed some friends about my impending jump off the cliff. I told them that it feels great to have made this decision, though my friend, Eric, in his characteristic empathy sensed that I’m scared. And then in his continuing characteristic empathy, he responded : “Don’t worry, Christa – I already hit rock bottom underneath that cliff – so I’ll be there to catch you!” Not at all surprising since Eric honestly saved my life as I muddled through my MBA. My friend Laura simply responded “I am 150000% behind you.” My friend, Allan, said “You are very brave and thoughtful.” These are the very messages I needed today to lift me up.

When I think about finding security and stability, I’m reminded that it’s in our friends and family and in the chance we take on our own abilities that we can find a haven. The safest route for me is not to stand on that cliff hoping that it doesn’t crumble beneath me; it’s to jump, knowing that friends like Rob, Eric. Laura, and so many others are there to catch me if I need catching. They are the ones I can place my faith and trust in.

My friend, Jamie, finished up his last day at his job today. We went for a celebratory dinner, yummy cheap Thai food around the corner from my apartment at Sura. We toasted to our new adventures, to our choice to be free and to build the lives we want to live. And while there is still that underlying ripple of fear of the unknown, fear of what’s next, there is also a tremendous sense of excitement, of realizing that we are on the edge of becoming more ourselves.

I was reminded all day today, through so many different channels, that in September I came very close to never getting a tomorrow. I stood on West 96th Street, watching smoke billow out of my building, realizing I was living a life of great comfort and little meaning. That great “what if” hangs over my head every day, and rather than being plagued by it, I am so grateful for it. What if I hadn’t made it out of that building? What if that was the end? Could I have looked back on September 4th and said, “yes, I’m so glad that I was living that life?” No – not at all. In that moment, change became not an option, but an inevitability, and it’s been driving me forward, upward, and onward toward a life lived with greater meaning, greater purpose, every day since.

The image above is not my own. It can be found here.

career, change, dreams, hope, theatre

My Year of Hopefulness – Climb Up A Ways

Christa Avampato

One of the first Broadway shows I worked on was Cabaret at Studio 54. I would sit in the back of the theatre night after night and watch that story unfold, every show more beautiful than the show before. One of my favorite lines is from Herr Schultz (played by Ron Rifkin) to Fräulein Schneider (played by Blair Brown). Herr Schultz is trying to convince Fräulein Schneider to enter into a relationship with him, despite the fact that he is Jewish and the world is looking a little bleak for people of his heritage. He tells her that the apples at the base of tree are easy to pick up, though the fruit at the top of tree, if she is willing to climb up a ways, is so much sweeter. I worked on that show almost 11 years ago, and still I think of that line and how applicable it is to our lives every day.

I feel comfortable admitting in this blog post that very soon I will be moving on to a new position in my career. I’ve had an honest conversation with my boss and explained my intentions. I hope she understands. At the end of the day, the future of her team that she’s laid out is just not what gets me going. I completely understand that she’s in charge of the team and has every right to change the direction of the bus. My obligation is to decide whether or not to whole-heartedly get on the bus. I’ve decided to actively look for a new bus, and there are some stupendous options on the horizon.

Some people think I’m a little crazy for making this move. I’ve done a lot of good work in my position; I’ve built solid relationships that would serve me so well and get me promoted quickly. If only I could put my head down, keep my mouth shut, and phone it in just the way that I’ve been scripted, I’d be just fine. I could coast right through to the end of this recession no matter how long it lasts.

Those who know me a bit better just smile and nod when I say I’m looking for new opportunities that get me up out of bed in the morning. They know I’m not built for coasting. Yes, coasting is much easier in that it requires no exertion on my part. The trouble is that for me coasting is just an unbearable existence. Putting the pedal to the metal and ‘trying to get up that great big hill of hope’ is more my style. Herr Schultz was right: The vistas up there are so much wider and more open and beautiful. Fräulein Schneider didn’t know what she was missing.

The photo above is not my own. It can be found here.

change, dreams, leadership

My Year of Hopefulness – The Great Progression

Christa Avampato

“We must be silent before we can listen. We must listen before we can learn. We must learn before we can prepare. We must prepare before we can serve. We must serve before we can lead.” ~ William Arthur Ward

The Universe is trying to tell me something. Here I am on Day 2 with no voice. I can get out a squeak here and there. My friends have commented that I sound like a cross between Marge Simpson and those people on talk shows who want their identities to remain hidden. There is an odd kind of peace found in being silent. I can be silent about as long as I can sit still, which is to say roughly 5 seconds or so. At the moment, the universe is not giving me any choice in the matter. So I’m parked on my couch, being vewy, vewy quiet….

Those telepathic folks over at DailyGood sent me this quote last night about silence. I have definitely felt conflicting messages flooding my life lately – how to keep up and slow down at the same time, how to balance the effort to enjoy our lives with a constant eye on achievement and success. These are tough things to do. They don’t all play nicely together in the sandbox and often make us feel like we are at odds with ourselves.

So what if we begin with silence. My great hope is that you have not been forced into silence like me, but that it’s something you can choose, just for an hour or two. What can we find in silence? What kind of ideas can we get by sitting and being and doing nothing else? What do we listen to when we quiet our audible voice and the narrative inside our own minds?

Today, I am listening to the message that my life has many options. I don’t feel trapped at all – right now I feel like I have more options before me than I have ever had in my life. I am now most concerned with how to provide myself with the greatest amount of flexibility and freedom possible. And I’m learning that there are many ways to be free. We are free as soon as we choose to be.

I’ve also found that every day for the past several months I am learning so much about myself. I am becoming increasingly aware of what I enjoy and don’t enjoy, what makes me happy and what makes me sad, what kind of people I want to surround myself with and sadly which people I must release from my life, at least for now. I’m learning about the contribution I want to make to humanity, and I’m learning how my actions and words effect others and vice versa. To tell you the truth, it’s fun, albeit sometimes a little exhausting, to be in a state of hyper-learning.

And now the preparation. I was on the subway yesterday riding home from work and reading the following on one of the NYC subway posters: “If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it. ~ Abraham Lincoln, A House Divided” This sentiment was true not only for the U.S. in 1858, when Lincoln made this speech, but for our own lives as well. Silence and listening leads us to know the first first piece of Lincoln’s statement so that we can then prepare, serve, and lead our futures.

I’m finding it very hard to have different segments of my life call for a different kind of personality. I certainly believe in and practice the principle of knowing my audience, though I also believe ardently that we must be authentic at every moment, we must be more like who actually are at every moment. In this new life that I am creating for myself, filled with freedom and flexibility, I am preparing the way, offering myself a variety of options for income and making way for opportunities to pursue whatever makes me happy and piques my interest. Yoga, teaching, creating products and services, writing, travel, and research. With solid preparation, it is all possible.

All this preparation leads us to serve the world and our own happiness in the best way for each of us. We all have unique talents and abilities. The way to happiness for one of us is not necessarily the way to happiness for someone else. We have different priorities and interests, we have different goals and different paths we’d like to take to get to those goals. The key is to always ask “is this the best way forward? Am I providing an optimal amount of service by going about my life this particular way.”

And then finally all of our service leads us naturally on to leadership. Leadership is a funny thing. While there are some that feel the best way to lead is with strong opinions, to develop a clear delineated chain of command structure, I couldn’t disagree more. To me, leadership is service in its highest form. As a leader, and by leadership I don’t mean a title but a behavior, my only role is to serve those I’m leading, to lift them up to be the very best people they can become, to lead the very best lives possible.

I have been abundantly blessed with great leaders in my life, in my family, at work, in school, and among my friends, people who actively gave me tough advice and great support and love all at once. The greatest hope of my life as I begin Act 2 is that I can bundle up that advice, love, and support for others who I will lead going forward, whether they are in a classroom, at work, or people who come to me for any kind of advice or help. Success will be that I can impart any wisdom on them with the same degree of grace and humility that my leaders have shown me. And then I will be certain that the great progression that Williams Arthur Ward discusses will be well on its way.

The images above is not my own. It can be found here.

change, dreams, hope

My Year of Hopefulness – The Invitation

Christa Avampato

I am still sort of getting my new home set up. I’m having a hard time getting myself entirely set up. I’m sure this is being brought on by some left over emotional fall-out from the fire. I suppose I’m scared and worried that all of this will just got up in smoke again, literally. On Friday night, after a very long tough week, I rounded the corner to my apartment building to find my street littered with fire trucks and flashing lights and big brawny fire fighters in their gas masks and black and yellow suits. Pre-September 5th, my first thought upon seeing this kind of scene was “I hope everyone is okay.” On Friday night, my first thought was “not again”. As Dinah Washington said, “What a difference a day makes.”

The fire on Friday wasn’t in my apartment building, it was across the street, and no one was hurt. I asked the fire fighters. I went upstairs to my apartment grateful that everything was still the exact way I left it Friday morning. Just inside my front door, there’s a piece of art that I read every morning. It’s a poem by Oriah Mountain Dreamer, an Indian Elder, which I wrote out many years ago in my nicest penmanship on fancy paper. It was one of the few things to survive my apartment building fire, and I am sure that is not a coincidence.

There are a few lines in this poem that have really effected me as of late:

Can you disappoint others to be true to yourself?

Can you stand in the centre of your sorrow and still shout at the great Silver Moon, “yes!”?

Do you like the company you keep in the empty moments?

Being true to yourself:

This can manifest in our careers, relationships to others, in how we spend our free time. It’s hard work to be true to ourselves, it’s tough for us to get over the guilt of what we think we owe to others. And too often we disappoint ourselves for the sake of others. In truth, we let people down even more when we aren’t authentic, when we feign happiness instead of actually being happy.

Stand in the centre of our sorrow:

Disappointments and sadness are a part of life. I’ve known people who deal with their sadness by using it as fuel for creating happiness. I consider all of my friends who have recently lost their jobs and used their job loss as an opportunity to do something they’ve always wanted to do. These are the people who shout “yes”, yes to the goodness of life, even if life at that very moment is not very good at all. These are the people who keep me feeling hopeful in times that seem so bleak. They are my inspiration.

Unfortunately, I’ve also known people who use their sadness and disappointment as a way to make themselves and everyone around them miserable. These are people who can’t commit, who can’t seem to build healthy relationships, and as a result feel constantly alone and disconnected. They stand in the middle of their sorrow and sulk. Temporary sulking is okay – we all need to sulk once in a while. We just can’t let it get the best of the us.

The empty moments:

Someone who smiles when no one around is a person who is truly happy. These are the people I want in my life, people who like their own company. My friend, Ken, is someone I look to as this example. Ken could spend all day in his house by himself and have the best day of his life. He is someone who loves the empty moments.

Below is Oriah Mountain Dreamer’s poem, The Invitation. I hope it helps you as much as it has helped me for so many years:

“It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own; if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic.

I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself. If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul.

I want to know if you can see Beauty even when it is not pretty every day. And if you can source your own life from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, ‘Yes.’

It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the centre of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.”

career, design, dreams, education, innovation

My Year of Hopefulness – Use Design to Change Fist Stick Knife Gun

Christa Avampato

Over the past few weeks I have had a series of fortunate coincidences. I know the universe is always talking to us, that we are always in receipt of messages that connect us and bind us together, that point toward the way we are supposed to take. In my heart I know this, though given my surprisingly thick skull, those messages some times have difficulty reaching my brain. That surprisingly thick skull of mine often has to be clobbered over the head several times in order to “get it”.

The series of some of the fortunate events has unfolded as follows:
1.) A few weeks ago I had my very rough draft of Innovation Station, an after-school program, accepted by Citizen Schools, an outstanding organization that exists to help average folks like me put together a curriculum we’re passionate about to teach in public middle schools.

2.) Just about the same time that Citizen Schools accepted my proposal, my former boss, Bob, sent me an invitation to attend an event on design thinking hosted by the Rotman School of Management. Tim Brown, CEO of Ideo and one of the featured speakers at the event, just released his first book called Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation. It is a powerful “blueprint for creative leaders” in a variety of sectors. Hmmm….sounds like a brilliant jumping off point for an after-school program about innovation, doesn’t it? (I’m attending the Rotman School event and writing about it for Examiner and for TJCC; I hope to meet Tim and get his take on Innovation Station.)

3.) This week I have come across dozens of articles about the renewed focus on after-school programs, both from a funding and legislative perspective. Here are some examples: Home Alone, Peering at the Future, The Uneducated American, Paterson Proposes Cuts to Close Deficit.

4.) Last week, my friend, Wayne, took me to the annual meeting for Children’s Health Fund, an organization that got its start at a grassroots level in one tiny area of Harlem and has grown to an international organization with the mission to advocate and assure healthcare for every child, everywhere. I want to do the same thing for education and their model and messaging is such an inspiration. They work with Harlem Children’s Zone, an organization started by Geoffrey Canada that is a holistic system of education, social-service and community-building programs aimed at helping the children and families in a 97-block area of Central Harlem.

5.) About a month ago, my friend, Dan, told me about a podcast that featured Geoffrey Canada. I just picked up his book Fist Stick Knife Gun: A Personal History of Violence in America. I can’t put it down and I think I just found my calling. I googled Harlem Children’s Zone tonight and discovered that the two schools where I will be teaching for Citizen Schools are in the same area as the Harlem Children’s Zone.

6.) My friend, Amanda Steinberg, and her company, Soapbxx, designed the Harlem Children’s Zone website.

7.) The PhD program I’ve been looking at within The New School was recently highlighted by Bruce Nussbaum, a journalist whom I greatly admire. He writes about design and innovation. He is a professor at Parsons, one of the other schools within The New School. He has been writing a lot about design thinking, social entrepreneurship, and Tim Brown’s book. He believes that Design Thinking can transform systems like healthcare and education. So do I. So do a growing number of people. This is about to get very exciting.

As I was getting off the subway tonight and heading home I had the distinct feeling that there is no turning back for me now. I finally get what the universe is trying to tell me. I will not be able to sit still knowing that what I have to offer in the way of business, product development, an appreciation for design, and a passion for education as a tool to build a solid future, so clearly matches an unmet need in the world. This is the mash-up of work I was meant to do.

This journey was a long one. My life’s work has been in front of me all along, since I was a kid facing a lot of the struggles that too many kids face. I just didn’t know that it should or could be the work of my life. It took me the better part of 33 years to figure out what I was meant to do with my time here. And now that I know, the fear has dissipated completely. The anxiety about my future evaporated and has been replaced by only excitement and a feeling of purpose. Goethe would tell us that there is magic in commitment. He was right. I know that now.

I had lots of wrong turns, lots of dead-ends, and lots of disappointments. Nothing ever felt right, though I had a ton of fun in the exploration process. I wouldn’t change any of it. I’m just grateful and glad that I won’t have to die with the music still in me, as John Lennon lamented about so many people. Finally, finally, finally I know I’m on the cusp of my life’s work. It’s stretched out before me like a beautiful winding road, and it’s time for me to hop aboard and get going. In those poignant, truthful words of Theodore Geisel, my mountain is waiting.

The beautiful image above is not my own. It can be found here.

dreams, failure, friendship, mistakes, success

My Year of Hopefulness – The Blessing of Mistakes

Christa Avampato

“A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.” ~ James Joyce, Irish novelist, from Ulysses

The passing of time can be a frustrating thing. We may spend time on one activity that leads us to a dead-end when we could have spent that time on something that would have lead us to a success. It’s easy to become overwhelmed by how many ways we have to spend our time; so many in fact that we might feel that no matter how much we love what we’re doing, we could always be doing something that would make us even happier. The odd paradox of choice, as Barry Schwartz calls it. Too many opportunities leads us to too many opportunity costs. These increased opportunity costs are beginning to effect the way we view failure and mistakes.

Rather than valuable learning tools, we might be tempted to view them as a waste of time. Why should I try and fail and learn when there are so many other things I could be trying and possibly succeeding at? And yet we know that failure is a part of this life. We have to fail. We have to stretch ourselves well beyond our comfort zones, well beyond even the most optimistic view of our own abilities. If we don’t push our limits and fail, then we’ll never know exactly how much we can achieve. Unrealized achievement that was within our grasp had we pushed a little harder is far worse than failure.

I think about failure a lot. In terms of jobs and relationships and pursuits I’ve considered, even in places where I moved and tried to make a home. Sometimes I feel badly about all my failures, and then I consider so many of my brave friends and family who just refused to let fear stand in their way. My friend, Phyllis, who just today wrote to me and said she left her job to focus on her own business full-time. “I’m secretly scared sh*tless,” she said. “I think that’s probably fairly normal for anyone who quits a well-paying job in this crappy economy.” I agree. And I’m so proud of her and inspired by her actions.

My friend, Allan, has a good paying job, albeit a little boring for him. He had the opportunity to continue with a new assignment there – one he could certainly do if he could just resign himself to not liking the job. Instead, he’s taking a risk and going back to school for a graduate degree in mathematics, his greatest passion.

I have a few friends who are getting married next year. And guess what? They’re all scared, too. They’re afraid of failing, of being hurt, of hurting someone else. They’re afraid of letting other people down, of wasting someone else’s time. They’re afraid they aren’t enough. When I asked them if they really thought this was a good idea, to be getting married, they all said yes unequivocally. “Marriage,” one of them said to me, “is the greatest leap of faith there is. We can be afraid of failure. We just can’t let it prevent us from going after happiness.”

What if we could think of failure as a blessing? What if we could seek out failure as a great teacher? And what if we opened up our hearts and minds and accepted and forgave our own failures and the failures of others, too? Would that kind of acceptance and forgiveness make the failures easier to bear and the successes that much sweeter to earn?

The image above is not my own. It can be found here.

business, children, dreams, education, innovation, philanthropy

My Year of Hopefulness – Citizen Schools

Christa Avampato

Yesterday, October 7th, was a decisive turning point for me. Amazing since September 30th, exactly one week ago, was a really bad day on a lot of levels. On the 30th, I went out with my friends, Jeff and Brian, to a local restaurant in our neighborhood. After hearing Christa Avampato’s a series of unfortunate events, he told me about his philosophy of life. “It’s a sine wave.”

On the 30th, I was decidedly at the bottom of the trough. The only good thing about being there is that the only way to move forward is up. Oscar Wilde said, “We’re all lying in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars.” Today, my stars took shape as Citizen Schools.

For five months I’ve been writing an education pilot proposal, Innovation Station, that uses theatre to teach inner-city middle school kids in New York City about innovation, product development, and entrepreneurship through an after-school program. Yesterday, the proposal was accepted to be part of Citizen Schools, an organization that supports community members teaching what they’re passionate about to middle school students in public schools all around the country. I go into training in January and will begin the pilot in February in East Harlem. I’ll be blogging about the class (of course!) so that people who are interested in it can follow the progress. You’ll also be able to follow the progress of it on my Facebook and Twitter accounts.

The similarities to what I want to do and what Citizen Schools already supports are truly miraculous. A dream come true! They provide curriculum writing support, in-classroom support for every session, webinars, connection to the school. All the classes conclude with the WOW! Showcase – a series of presentations where the students demonstrate mastery over the material they learned to a panel of experts in the field of the project. The sessions are photographed, filmed, and publicized on the organization’s website. All of the things I asked for in my proposal Citizen School provides to every program they support, and then some! It’s incredible!


I have to publicly thank my friend, Cari, for suggesting that I reach out to Citizen Schools. 10 days after I spoke with Cari, I’m now officially a Citizen Teacher in training, and I couldn’t be happier! I also need to thank a few friends who provided amazing feedback on the proposal at its earliest stages: Liz, Amy, Cindy, Steve, Elizabeth, and the lovely ladies on Owning Pink. Without your valuable input, the proposal would have never been approved because I probably would have never submitted it. Your encouragement kept me going. And to Laura, my amazing writing and business partner, who when I asked her if I could really write this said simply, “of course you can” and promptly moved on to another topic because me doubting myself was just not okay on her watch, or ever for that matter.


Originally, I had set out to print the proposal and send it out to a bunch of schools for review on Saturday, September 5th, the very day that my apartment building caught fire. Obviously, I didn’t get around to that. My original plan was not meant to be. And thank goodness. This scenario with Citizen Schools is so much better than my original plan of trying myself to get an individual school to sign up for the pilot.


This process has been a great lesson in stepping up and in not over-thinking a situation and an outcome. We can ask ourselves a million times if we’re ready for a certain situation – be it professional or personal. Am I ready for this job, this change, this relationship, this move, this challenge? And the answer is no, we’re never ready. And that’s okay. By not being ready, we are authentic, we are open to the magic that the world offers our ideas if only we have the courage to articulate them.


I learned through this experience that sometimes we need to shut up and just do. Forget about the if’s and but’s. We will deal with them when they present themselves. There are people in the world who need the power of our ideas and dreams. We cannot allow our own insecurities to deny them our talents. ‘Perfect’ is the greatest enemy of ‘good’. And good will do just fine.


My friend, Lon, reminded me recently about the fire that closed the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. This year, the repairs were completed and the Cathedral re-opened, more sacred and beautiful than it was before. In a way, I feel like my life and Innovation Station have gone through the same trial by fire. Some things destroyed and re-built emerge more beautiful.

dreams, future

My Year of Hopefulness – Living Great Thoughts

Christa Avampato

“And what he greatly thought, he nobly dared.” ~ Homer

I had brunch with my friend, Dan, today. He was interested in learning more about my desire to take up a writer’s life full-time and still be able to afford my current lifestyle. The greatest gift I have in my friendship with Dan is his ability to listen to my dreams and ideas and help me figure out how to act on them. “When you close your eyes and imagine your life as a writer, what do you picture? And does that picture allow you to live the same quality of life you have now?”

They’re good questions, hard questions. I have some ideas about avenues I can take that will make writing at least the main piece of my job if not the entire job. Like a muscle, the more writing we do, the sharper our skill of writing becomes so the plus side of being employed as a writer is that my own personal writing will also improve as a result. And isn’t that what a job should be – an activity that provides us with training and development in areas that interest us so that our lives overall are enriched?

At brunch, Dan and I ordered tea. On my tea bag, I read the quote by Homer and it so perfectly relates to the conversation we were having at that moment. It’s wonderful and necessary to have dreams, to think big and then bigger still. What really brings about transformation is our ability to harness those dreams and the energy that they give us and allow that energy to put us into motion in the physical world. We have to look at the end result and work backwards to develop a game plan and smaller goals that help us fulfill that vision for our lives. Thoughts and dreams about our futures are not enough. We must eventually stand up, get out there, and build them.

community, dreams, faith, grateful, gratitude, learning, love

My Year of Hopefulness – Ancient Wisdom

Christa Avampato

“The interdependency of Humankind, the relevance of relationship, the sacredness of creation is ancient, ancient wisdom.” ~ Rebecca Adamson

On the 17th floor of my apartment building, I feel a little closer to what’s miraculous and sacred in our world. In the past few weeks I have felt some energy driving me toward something new; I’ve felt my life taking on a different kind of meaning. Last night as I was getting my apartment ready for the movers to arrive, I had my music on, washing my new kitchen supplies and watching the sun sink down behind those lovely water towers. In one moment I felt intensely overcome with gratitude, as if my heart had opened up in a way that it never has before. There seemed to be so many opportunities laid out before me and all I had to do was select one, like taking a book from a shelf.

I began to tick through my personal relationships and all of the strength and hope and inspiration that I find in each of them. I started to recall kindnesses and favors and support that I’ve been offered, not just in the past few weeks but as far back as I can remember. I wanted to give the whole world a great big hug, followed by a great big thank you, for everything.

I wonder if this feeling, this sense of belonging has been available to me along and I just didn’t see it or didn’t know how to tap into it. I’m intrigued by the difference between looking and seeing, by how often we run around desperately seeking that which inevitably ends up being right in front of us. What if we just stopped, for a brief moment, and saw with a new kind of clarity the many blessings we have, recognized are tremendous capacity for change, for goodness, for creation.

We can construct a richer, happier, more meaningful existence, for ourselves and others, by tapping into the wisdom that is all around us, by recognizing that we are all always in this together. All of a sudden when we realize we aren’t alone, when we recognize that there are ancient, fundamental learnings that connect us across generations, across the globe, across time continuums, our feelings of loneliness and isolation are replaced by community and love. The impossible becomes not only possible, but imminent.

books, children, dreams, goals, literature

My Year of Hopefulness – Motivation and The Little Prince

Christa Avampato

“If you want to build a ship, don’t herd people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery

I love The Little Prince. It was one of my favorite books as a child. I love his wide-eyed questioning of life, and his desire to explore things that are strange and unexplained. As children often do, he was able to make connections between seemingly disparate activities and relationships, and in the process showed us how to think about our lives in a larger context than just our day-to-day collection of tasks. He asks us to consider our role in and contribution to humanity as a whole.

I was thinking about The Little Prince this morning, eating my Cheerios and looking at the water towers that dot my view from my apartment. The water towers look like brave guards, standing watch; they almost seem to breathe. They make me feel safe. The city looks so different from 17 floors up. I’m always struck by that – as I get down to the street-level, my neighborhood transforms. Up above, I have the ability to be more idealistic. The height helps me dream and consider my larger motivations in life, apart from the actual tasks I’m engaged in; it helps me think like the Little Prince.

This quote from Antoine de Saint-Exupery is helping me frame up my own desired contribution to humanity. I want to help as many people as I can to use their creativity to improve our world. That’s not going to happen in a business plan; it’s not going to happen through mandates and time lines and a to-do list. It can happen if I follow Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s advice in every area of my life, with every interaction I have with every person I know and meet. It’s that desire to play a part in building a better world that I must foster in all of my relationships. Individuals will find their own way to make a contribution. They all have their own talents and interests that can be used toward this common goal; my role is to be their biggest cheerleader, their champion, their advocate, and where applicable, their guide.