You Are Not an Indentured Servant

Do you ever have a secret dread that you are going to die without ever having fulfilled your life purpose? Your soul will rise up from your expired body saying, “Dang! I blew it! That collection of choral works I was supposed to write never happened!” Or, “That breakthrough in cancer research that I was supposed to bring into the world somehow got lost in the shuffle of paperwork.” Or, “I was too busy surfing the Web checking out what everybody else was writing to ever get my own poems down on paper.” 

Then what? Will you face some cosmic reckoning? Will some displeased deity wag a finger at you and let you know (once again) what a sorry screw up you are? After all, you’d been entrusted with a unique, precious gift, like a page sent forth to deliver a long-lost artifact to King Arthur that would save Camelot, but, oops, you got distracted. And–whoa!–there goes Camelot collapsing into chaos.  Sorry.

But what if it isn’t like that at all? What if you came into the world with a soul desire, not a soul duty, and apart from your own disappointment there’s no reckoning to be done if it never comes into being? A lot of things never happen. An infinite number of things, in fact, never happen. A zillion acorns fall to the ground and never become oak trees, and the Universe nonetheless loves them and keeps on going.

You are here as a free being, and if you think there’s some cosmic contract you signed before you arrived on planet Earth that made you an indentured servant to the Universe, let me, in the name of heaven, release you from your perceived obligation.

How does it feel if I say to you, you don’t have to accomplish anything in this lifetime? Let me repeat that, just in case you weren’t paying attention. You don’t have to accomplish anything in this lifetime. Not only does the person with the most toys not win, the person with the longest C.V. doesn’t win either, because there isn’t any winning to be had.

News bulletin: You arrived on this Earth already complete, already worthy, already perfect, already fulfilled, and there’s not a thing in the world you have to prove and not a being in the Universe you have to impress.

How does that feel?

It’s true there will never be another you, and the unique set of gifts you bring will never appear in the same form again. Cherish them and enjoy them. And if those choral works are singing inside of you and really asking you to write them down and share them, then do it and don’t let anything stop you. But don’t be deceived into thinking it’s your soul’s duty to write them, because it isn’t. It’s your soul’s desire.

If you do write them, not only will the world will be the richer for it, but you’ll experience the contentment of allowing your soul to blossom in the only way it can — out of joy and freedom rather than obligation and fear.