Over the past few years, I believed that my passion in life was systems and my purpose was to heal or integrate these systems. Looking back on my life this has made sense to me because I’ve seen these patterns within it, as I shifted from one system to another.
Growing up, I was immersed within and loved nature as an ecosystem. Later I fell in love with roleplaying games and computer games, both of which are basically social systems. Through computer games, I became fascinated with computers and eventually the Web which are technical systems. Finally through building communities in games, I became fascinated with organizations which returned my interest back to social systems on a much deeper level (i.e. culture, aka values, beliefs, behaviours).
Inspiring People
But recently, after discovering Simon Sinek and listening to him speak about his passion, something changed. I related to his passion which is inspiring other people. This in turn reminded me of my mantra from years back (i.e. Connect. Empower. Inspire.) and made me realized that this was a cyclic way of playing, learning, and working through life.
Still, something didn’t feel right though. I related to him wanting to inspire people but using Simon’s own methodology of discovery, I asked why were we so interested in inspiring people? After thinking about this for a while, it dawned on me that I wanted to help people feel alive because this is what sparked my own quest and hero’s journey of discovery. I wanted to feel alive in my own life.
But still, again it felt like something was missing. I knew that figuring out your passion, purpose, and vision in life, helped you to authentically and creatively express your whole self and thus made you feel alive. But what was the singular word that encapsulated this all and symbolized it?
Reconnecting With The Past
Luckily, just the other day, I was fortunate enough to meet up with an old client and friend of mine who I had helped when I did web design work. During our conversation together, I couldn’t help but see the synergy between us both. Normally when I have conversations with people, I’m seeing things at a deeper level than they are but with Peter, he was completely on my level. That’s because Peter understands and teaches the secret of business which is relationships (real ones that is, one’s that involve empathy at their core).
But during our conversation Peter mentioned a couple of things that stood out for me. He mentioned that my conversations with him during the discovery phase of his website design really helped him to understand what he was all about at his core. He also humorously said in a third person narrative way that, “Nollind was my litmus test for authenticity, consistency, and absence of hype or fluff.” I loved that he said that (so much so that I’m going to use it as a referral quote) because it spoke at the heart of what I was trying to do with my web design clients. I wanted to help them to authentically and creatively express what they were all about in a simple yet powerful way, without any superficial flash or hype.
Sparking Conversations
After the conversation, when I was reflecting upon a lot of what he had said, that’s when something sparked within me. All of this time, I had been reiterating that systems were my passion. And I knew that the trinity of systems were relationships, information, and identity. Even more so, I knew that these trinity of words formed a narrative themselves. People connected and formed relationships, empowered themselves through this shared information, and then finally inspired themselves to action when they saw the collective identity and purpose they were all trying to work towards. In effect, the many become one entity, one collective identity.
That was my passion. Identity. Suddenly when I realized this, many things started making sense and falling into place. It explained why I always loved building characters (i.e. character development) within roleplaying games (both online and off), so much so that I laughingly remarked I could spend the rest of my life doing it. It also explained why I loved playing roleplaying games when I was younger and being the game master within them. I loved putting epic challenges and conflicts before people to see how they would rise to the occasion and react to them which in turn revealed their real identities (i.e. conflicts define us).
This also explains to me why so many people love playing online games today. They get to participate in and contribute to solving epic challenges and conflicts that brings out the best in them, their social potential. No wonder it’s so addicting for them and why they feel so alive doing it, in comparison to a job where they are just told to pull a lever like a robot and they can’t really contribute their own ideas, their own creative self, as a human being.
My Emerging Identity
All said and done, with this new understanding now, everything makes sense with regards to my identity and what value I can bring to others. It even makes sense with regards to seeing myself as a bard whose archetypal characteristics are playfulness, wholeness, and uniqueness. That’s because I help people to see the hero in themselves by playfully discovering their unique identity, thus making them feel whole, epic, and alive in turn. And when that happens, that’s when the social potential within the singular individual and the collective organization are released like a tsunami of social change.