Legendary Blog

So I was sitting on the porch the other day flipping through applications on my itouch, when I came across it.  Doodle Jump.  For those of you who don’t know what Doodle Jump is, it’s an insanely addictive game where you move a little Doodler as he jumps from platform to platform, evading obstacles and monsters, to try and climb to a new highest score.

The game always ends with you reaching the inevitable frustration of watching your little Doodler plunge to his doom as you let out a, “Noooooo”...and then play again.

The thing is, I haven’t played this game in months.  At one time something that was so addictive and exciting has lost its allure.

I sat there wondering why my mind wasn’t interested in jumping through Doodle Land anymore.  I knew the appeal was gone as I sat there playing a game, just waiting for it to be over. (Well, actually I have to admit I still break this out from time to time.) But it was no where near as exciting as it once was.

And it dawned on me that the game just got to be monotonous.  What were once exciting challenges turned into redundant expectations.  The flow of the game had been lost because there were no new difficulties.

What I learned from Doodle Jump is that life without challenge becomes boring.  Entertaining new challenges and ideas would mean your considering doing something you did not think possible. Otherwise we get caught up in the rut of reaffirming what we already know we can do instead of trying out new ways of being.

Impossible is a strange word.  For some it prevents action.  For others it fuels it.  And yet, still others don’t even know what it means for something to be impossible.

It is like a timeframe, and impossibility lies somewhere in between yesterday’s answers and tomorrow’s uncertainty.

For some reason, certainty is a system we like to operate in.  What is known can be relied upon, where what is unknown is risky, uncertain, and therefore not possible.

But if we only work in the known, then we are going to keep getting the same answers and results.  It is when you entertain uncertainty, that the results begin to transform into something new.

Kyle Weiss was 13 years old when he attended 2006 World Cup in Germany.  He witnessed how the game of soccer is a cultural cornerstone, and learned that most of the youth in Africa lack access to basic supplies. Most of the time, balls were constructed with materials you or I would treat as trash.

Wanting to help, he and his brother Garett gathered soccer balls, cleats, and other equipment to send over to third-world countries in Africa.

What if there was an immeasurable power that existed. This power could transform your reality.  It could bring hope, optimism, motivation, change, love, achievement, and beauty to your life.  Would you use this power, going after everything you wanted, or would you simply let it go to waste?

This power is the story of you.  It is what makes your life so interesting, so authentic, so...empowering.  Think about the structure of a story.

A story made up of chapters. Chapters containing sequences of events.  Some foreshadowing others.  Others prefacing some.  And the rest are unknown twists of irony eluding any means of prediction.

The pages written can serve a versatile function.  Those pages could be setting up events to come or they could mark the end of one chapter and the beginning of another.

Legendary people are all around us.  Discretely disguised in everyday attire, they surround us.  Their actions affect us, sometimes without us even knowing.  Like old-world gunslingers, these everyday mavericks carry with them a wholesome purpose - fulfill a life guided by their beliefs.

A life guided by beliefs is particularly powerful because it stretches further than scripted norms. Motivation for action is not limited to fulfilling a role of expectations, it spawns from something much deeper.  Sometimes we loose site of this.  But legendary shines brightest when we see a person’s core beliefs in everything they do.

Expectations are a shortcut to how we navigate this world.  Day-to-day we have certain expectations. We expect to find water with the twist of the faucet and light with the flick of a switch.

In the north-eastern section of Dumont, New Jersey hundreds of residents expect to see envelopes, magazines, letters, and bills in their mailbox everyday.  Like the postal slogan says, “neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers for the swift completion of their appointed rounds.”

There was an Indian tribe residing in the Shuswap region of British Colombia.  This specific region was considered by the Indian people to be a rich place.  There was plenty of salmon and game, vast amounts of below-ground resources, and plenty of fertile land.  They built village sites and had elaborate technologies to effectively cultivate the resources.  The Indians looked at their lives to be rich and good.

Yet, over time the elders began to find predictability throughout their days.  With everything so readily available, challenge began to go out of life.  Without challenge, life had no meaning.

So the elders gathered and discussed what they should do.  Through discourse and in their wisdom they decided the village should move.  Every 25 to 30 years, the entire population would move to a different part of the Shuswap land, and there, they found challenge.   There were lands to fertilize, new game trails to learn, new areas to navigate.  Life would regain its meaning and everyone would feel rejuvenated and happy. Incidentally, it also allowed resources in one area to recover after years of harvesting.