With Permission

With permission, today's blog is posted by one of my coaching clients. Alexis Korotash's passion for humanity is relevant, and I thought her energy and words could be shared forward for All of Us!

Hi Char

Here's that post I read to you that I put on Facebook: 

Maybe everyone has already thought this, or maybe it sounds too obvious to say out loud but I'm gonna say it anyway. I've been thinking a lot about this lately...

I used to become very depressed after watching a movie like Lord of the Rings, Pirates of the Caribbean, Avatar, Star Trek, Star Wars etc. (you get the idea) that I was never going to have an adventure like Frodo did to take the One Ring to Mordor. It always felt like I would be stuck in "Hobbiton" and be bored forever because life isn't that exciting.

But what I realized is that, as obvious or simple as this sounds, my life is actually the adventure. It's adventurous to move across the country, it's adventurous to travel, it's adventurous to be brave enough to have a dream and to see it realized; to actually admit that I want something and to take action to get it.

And that I care about the environment and its inhabitants (people included)

And just like in any great adventure movie, it's got ups and downs - usually quite severe in both directions. It has loss and heartbreak and love and happiness but the hero keeps on the adventure because they believe in it. They will have moments when they doubt what they're doing or they doubt that they can do it at all and want to give up or actually do give up, but the characters around them that get to know them lift them up or finish it for them because they come to believe in something too.

Well I think it's easier to let fear and sadness win. The news does a really good job crushing any faith you had left in humanity and the world and the other people who buy into that fear do an equally good job convincing you if you weren't already. The bravery and the integrity comes from not buying into it but by questioning it and seeking perspective. By being steadfast in your belief that there are good things and that you're allowed to be happy. Sometimes that can even mean redefining what these are for you.

The easy road is in the Hobbit hole. And maybe this post is a decade late, but whatever, it relates to almost any adventure movie. And I think the bravest thing that any of us can do is to love no matter what. This includes ourselves. It feels safe to give in to fear;  we don't go outside because something might happen. But don't be fooled, death can find you anywhere, just give her time.

I think a lot of us feel like we have no purpose or that we're not that important somehow. We feel that because we can't fix the whole world by ourselves that it's a lost cause to even fix a little bit of it. We forget that "Rome wasn't built in a day."

And if Improv at Second City has taught me anything, it's that you have to "bring a brick, not the cathedral" in order to construct a living, breathing scene. If we all do our part and believe, and keep trying and support and love - and always give it our best, and keep spreading that message, it has to work in some way. Even if you don't fix the entire world overnight, you helped it be just that little bit better.

Your adventure is out there, it's in living your life. You can live your life out loud or you can live it in silence but one way or another, you will meet an end.

So if you have a dream, don't give up on it. And if you don't have a dream, you can always find one, make one up or spread a little love.

I love you, you are beautiful. Keep going :) <3

• June 30, 2016
• Charlene Hancock