At midlife and beyond we get a chance for a second act, but some of us don’t recognize this possibility and instead decide, so to speak, to go into syndication and re-run our first act over and over again. We may get all kinds of monetary residuals from this, but on a psychological and soul level this is like watching the same Seinfeld episode every night for the rest of your life. Or maybe what you decide is that it’s okay to be in re-runs for the time being as your real goal in life is to take all that money you've been putting in those IRAs, 401K’s and other investments in your retirement account and retire and go on a perpetual vacation. But even Jerry Seinfeld is not satisfied with that even though he made a killing on his show and continues to rake in the cash with all the re-runs that can be seen almost every day of the year. He just won’t go off into the sunset, but instead keeps showing up on Letterman or Oprah or even, Lord help us, on some show called The Marriage Ref where he and a panel of other celebrities act as marriage counselors to some poor couple they attempt to help but in truth only do it for the laughs.
But Jerry Seinfeld is really listening to and answering his soul’s call, which is to make people laugh. It’s what he does, it’s who he is and the money is simply what he gets when he does his soul’s bidding. What Seinfeld’s life proves is that our soul’s don’t call us to make money. Our soul’s call us to do our thing, our unique and particular thing. Now, in many cases we will actually make some money at using the talents and gifts that come from our souls call, but there is no guarantee of this. Depending on the type of soul call and your individual drive and circumstances you may or may not be able to make a living with your soul's call, in some cases, like Seinfeld, a really good living, but making money, in and of itself, is not a soul call. But this is a bill of goods we have been sold by our culture and the media in particular.
Now a hundred years ago when many people in this country struggled just to make ends meet and even now in third world countries and other places across the globe, where people are so poverty stricken and so held back by repressive and corrupt governments and political systems that they really don’t have the luxury of thinking about what their soul might call them to do. In those cases their soul is calling them to survive and that’s about it, but for those of us in the western world this is not the case.
We have been given, by virtue of where we live, the opportunity to listen to our soul and act on its call. This is particularly true in our second act as this is a time when we have most likely met our family obligations or are getting close to it. In addition, we in the west have been granted through technology and science and our own actions toward living healthy lives, another twenty or thirty years longer, on average, than our parents' generation. We have the time, we have the health and we have the money to do more than just go off on a perpetual vacation. Oh, vacations are nice, but just as Seinfeld has shown by his continuing to show up doing comedy, a continuous vacation gets old after awhile.
As it turns out, if we are listening, our soul has more in mind for us than that. But, let's talk a little more about money since so much of what we see and are told by the media, this should be our goal, to be as rich as Seinfeld and then we could retire and never be heard from again, except maybe by post card from some exotic place. But money is indeed no soul call. If it were, then all the celebrities, socialites and other wealthy people in this country would be really, really happy, satisfied just spending their money and having a good old time of it and people would respect them for it. But no one wins the Nobel Prize for being rich or given the Medal of Honor for having a large bank account. These things are reserved for people who make a contribution to something beyond their own personal desires and good times. Of course, you don't have to win any prizes to be answering your soul's call, but neither will you win one if you die with the most toys, to use an idea that I have seen as model for the good life.
The idea of money as motivator and life goal is so pervasive in our culture that it's hard to go a day without being bombarded with this idea everywhere we look. The message being presented to us is that money equals the good life, the best life, the one we should aspire to live. Of course, this is the idea the media is trying to sell us. Look at all the reality shows based on looking in on the life of wealthy people. But if you look closely at these shows you will find that the real draw is the drama, not the lavish living they do. If the show Keeping Up With the Kardashians didn’t have conflict, arguments, disagreements and just plain family dysfunction, no one would watch it. Who wants to watch people play and have a good time. It’s fun for us to actually play and have a good time ourselves, but watching other people do it on the television would be boring. It would also be boring to watch people work or create something, regardless of how meaningful or how soulful that thing might be, unless the show also presents drama and cat fighting. Also to have a show where people are doing their soul's call, would in most cases not translate as good TV. But actually doing work and creating something meaningful, that is, in service to the greater good, is what our soul’s call us to do and it is what makes us feel good about ourselves.
Shows like KUWTK do not portray this at all. Oh, they show the girls and the mom talking about their various money-making enterprises but these are all based on selling their celebrity status in one form or another. There is never any talk on that show about making a contribution to anything other than their own bank accounts. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not condemning them, it’s their life, they have the right to do as they please and the networks have a right to produce whatever shows the public will watch – it is as they say, a free country and this one of the things that makes living in America great, but, when we as the audience not only accept this form fntertainment but actually make it successful by watching it, we are contributing, not to the greater good but to something insidious and detrimental to our lives, particularly if we aspire to or long for the money and lifestyle of the Kardashians as our main goal in life.
When we as a culture admire, look up to and revere the rich and famous, particularly the ones who do it for the money, we are pandering to something that is not in the best interests of our own lives. When we treat money and wealth as some kind of God to worship and use as a milestone for the good life, we are missing the profound message of our own souls. This is especially true at midlife and beyond, when we are given the opportunity to stop and regroup and think about what we will do with the second half of our lives. It's at this time that we need to move away from this idea and move toward a more soulful way of living. The first step in doing this is to turn off the television, the Internet, your iPod and all the other electronic devices that keep you plugged in but disconnected from your own soul and the second is to see what your soul might be trying to tell you. Isn’t it time you stopped and got quiet and listened? I think you’ll be surprised and gratified by what you hear.
Nest Week I will write about some of the challenges money presents to us in answering our soul's call and in life in general. Stayed tuned.
Blessings, Lorraine
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