Guest Blogger_OBSurgery: Living an Inspired Life

Inspired: Webster defines it basically as ‘influenced, moved, or guided by supernatural inspiration’ and ‘exerting an animated, enlivening, or exalting influence on’. 

How many of us actually live inspired lives?  Very few.  Western culture, full of distractions and various entities created to addict, overwhelm most minds, bodies, and souls.  Moreover, despite technological advancement, challenges with fulfilling even basic food and safety needs remain.  It is the rare woman or man who chooses or is capable to maintain an inspired life for any duration.

Practical considerations must not be overlooked.  Food, safety, love, and self-esteem, as Maslow pointed out, must be achieved, lest an individual becomes anxious.  Anxiousness, I contend, is the enemy to maintaining an inspired state of mind.   Were inspired defined to be ‘guided by natural [and not supernatural] inspiration’, then pursuing basic needs (food, etc.), would be considered living an inspired life.

What value is it to live an inspired life?  To the idealist, ultimate value: it is the equivalent of an enduring state of self-actualization.  But for most, just fulfilling food, safety, and some degree of love, would be completely satisfying.  How unfortunate that this should not be the norm!

It is the naive hope of this author that America (and civilization as a whole) advances so that the ‘Land of Dreams’ includes more visions of individuals achieving their greatest potentials and fewer visions of putting food on the table tomorrow.