Nollind Whachell

I’m simply stunned. I just discovered Peter Michaud’s website and after reading a handful of essays on it, I feel like I’ve met a kindred spirit on a similar journey in life. To start off, his About page describes a sensation that he feels that is almost exactly like a sensation that I feel myself, yet I’ve never ever told anyone about it except maybe my mother and my wife.

I have this pressure in my chest that feels like a fire fighting to get out. It claws up my arms, forcing me to embrace whatever comes, and to love it all the while. It climbs up my throat, and makes me think, and learn, and grow. I feel its heat through my body, and I have no choice but to spread it.

To me, this “fire” in my chest is my creative energy which defines who I uniquely am through the act of creation. Whenever I’m unable to do authentic creative work for whatever reason, I find this creative energy builds up within me until it reaches almost a boiling point. And there have been times when I’ve literally stretched my arms out and head back to try to release this creative energy in a deep emotional blast from my solar plexus, as I visualize this flaming pillar of golden yellowish energy bursting forth from my chest and up towards the heavens. If I could visually show what I’m feeling, it would probably relate closely to what is seen within the final scene of The Fifth Element movie.

But the similarities don’t end there. Like Peter, my passion at its basic core is helping people to become truly authentic individuals which in turn means helping them to express their authentic selves creatively in some way. The difficulty that I’m having right now though is how to clearly express this in words to people because it might seem quite foreign to them, particularly within the materialistic economy-focused world we live in. How I’ve tried to bridge the gap and communicate on a level that people can understand is by using terminology similar to professionals in design, particularly systems design (or ecosystems). And in a sense, that’s really what I’m trying to do, I’m trying to restore or heal the imbalances within a complex system that is out of balance, so that it begins running more efficiently and naturally again.

I think this is why my “Be Real Creative” and “Connect. Empower. Inspire.” mantras are so important to me because they relate directly with this need to help people be more authentic. But what I’ve realized is that before you can truly help other people, you need to truly help yourself first. And that’s what this journal is all about. In effect, it’s a daily reminder to help myself reveal and retain who I truly am deep down inside. Or put another way, I want it to be my place where I can fall back to when life gets too tough and I need to rest and rejuvenate in reflective thought.

That said though, like Peter, I still have this greater desire or purpose that is burning within me and it needs to be released and fulfilled. All I know at this point in time is glimpses of something I’m not quite sure I understand yet. It’s almost like a new way of living that effects all avenues of life (i.e. living, playing, learning, working) and that makes the most sense to me for one very important reason. Life itself is a complex system on a variety of levels. Often times, we think we can change our lives by just changing one aspect of it. Yet often that doesn’t work because we don’t live within a perfect closed system but within a connected environment. Thus if we want to truly change our lives, we need to look at not just one aspect of it but it as a whole which often requires a new outlook or perspective, similar to a paradigm shift. Once that occurs, then your attitude and outlook are completely changed, thus allowing you to change all aspects of your life as a whole in unison and in harmony.

Have you ever been in a situation where someone around you is so upset that their time is being wasted that they blurt out “Come on! Come on! Let’s go!” If you’re a gamer, this might happen within a raid or pick up group experience. If you’re out shopping, it might be someone behind you in a checkout line. If you’re at work, it might be someone in a boardroom with you who doesn’t want to be at the meeting.

The hilarious thing I find in most of these situations is that our lives are often too fast paced as it is already. Actually they’re going so fast sometimes that it becomes an auto-pilot blur to the point that we no longer are aware of what’s going on around us. But you might say, at least we’re still going, still flowing.

Ya, we are. But the important question we need to ask ourselves is this. Are we going and flowing in the right direction? The only way you can seriously ever know this for sure is if you turn off your auto-pilot, get off the track, and take a pit stop. Even then you need to walk away from the distraction of the track, think seriously where you’ve been and where you’re going.

Then and only then will you truly know if everything you’ve furiously been doing for the past while is actually leading you somewhere you want to go or actually taking you farther away. If it’s been taking you farther away, well then it looks like all of that furious fast-paced time saving has actually wasted quite a bit of your time.