What the World Needs Now
“The world needs you to do what you love. Have you done that?”
In the last season of the hit television crime series Criminal Minds, Detective Spencer Reid is on his death bed, and in that liminal space between this life and the next he meets Maive, a woman he loved years before who died too young. At one point, as Spencer is struggling with whether to wake up or not, Maive says to him the words above, that I’ll share here again:
The world needs you to do what you love. Have you done that?
It’s the simplest question, but it’s one of the most powerful I’ve experienced in a television show. Have you done what you love in a world that needs you to do just that?
We can easily brush this question off in a time such as this, when the world feels so heavy. There is tragedy and devastation, war and hate all around us, and it sometimes feels selfish to ask ourselves this question. And yet, here we are, asking it, because it matters.
What do you love?
Are you doing what you love?
Are you helping the world by doing what you love?
Something happens when we do what we love. Somehow, it heals, and not just us, but those around us. As I’ve written before and will continue to write, even our self-care isn’t for selfish reasons; we care for ourselves so we can better care for others, that’s the part of being human that matters, that ties us to our identity as kin to one another.
The healthiest people I’ve known in this life are the ones who take time to do what they love as they participate in the other important work they are called to do. These people trust and know themselves enough to lean into the beautiful stuff so that when the hard stuff shows up, they can engage it with clarity, an extension of that love they practice daily.
So today, I’d love to get to know you more with answers to this question. Please hop into the comments below and let me know what you love in this world, and why you love it.
Kinda weird but I like my job. I look for repair parts for usn submarines and I am pretty good at finding stuff. Been there 35 years. But I am surrounded with mostly boring engineering and design people talking mostly boring navy specs and rules and excruciatingly mind numbing navy procedures all day long so when I get home I love to do nothing. Actually sit or walk & try to purposely do nothing with my head,, think nothing say nothing read nothing decide nothing,, my only task at hand is to just empty out a little space in my head for God to come in and sit a while. takes some practice, for me it works best outside, where God likes to show off. Yeah, told you, kinda weird.
Since childhood, I've loved nature. I have other big loves too....but being in wild nature and being aware of our great interconnectedness with plants and animals has been my deepest, most enduring passion and solace. These days, with climate chaos, that love comes with grief. But that's okay. For the rest of my life, I'm thinking that repairing and holding up the things we can and bearing witness to the rest will be a big part of my work.