Clouds Up Close

Flight to Colorado, taken March 17, 2024 by Jackie Morreale.

​
It's kind of simple to achieve happiness in your life, at least according to my own very recent experience.

Follow your calling!

(I'm going to leave a couple of seconds of silence for us to think about that.)

Follow your calling. Do you know what it is?

I guess if you don't know what it is, the first step to happiness is to figure it out. What are you meant to do in this life? What do you feel compelled, by God, by your inner most thoughts and dreams, to do?

Because when you do it, it feels like flying.

I'm writing and drawing and learning new things, and now literally dreaming about flying among the clouds. My head is clear. Finally! I've turned down the noise and I'm in creation mode. It finally clicked: All the noise, all the distractions, all the stuff that I allowed to keep me down, the stuff that I allowed to cloud the way I thought about myself or my abilities or my talents, all go away when you're focused on the present, and what you're supposed to do, and your purpose.

For those of us who were like me about a year ago, who don't know or understand their purpose, had a lot of things that they wanted to do, and just couldn't cut through the noise of what all you should be doing with your life. It's frustrating to be so multifaceted in your functioning on trite things. But simple to fix.

Figure out what your thing is. Do it.

It's different for everyone. For me, I find clarity in a "Trinity" of pushing my body to the limits with endurance exercise to calm my emotions and connect with God. For others, it could be through meditation. It could be through a good song. It could be through finding flow in something that I'm really concentrating and working on, or have been trained to do and just do. It could be with prayer. It could be with going to your sacred place or seeing your sacred person.

I don't know the answer for everyone. But I think it's about building consistency. For me, I keep a journal and try to identify patterns. I started to see little dots connecting from all different parts of my life. Completely different parts of my life connect, sometimes even in the same day. Love when totally different circles overlap.

I wondered why. Is it just a coincidence? Is it just something that's weird? If you chart it in a journal over time, you can see that you're on a path that's meant to take you somewhere.

At least that's what I'm finding. I've just barely entered the tunnel, no where near seeing the light at the end.

Simply starting the journey has resulted in so many moments of clarity. Things I didn't actively think of pop into my head. Let's call it, a calling, to do a certain thing. To call a person. To create something. To change what I'm eating or doing or drinking or not or being present.

It all boils down to finding your purpose and doing it. Action towards my own callings are like wind gusts beneath my wings; like a weight has been lifted off my heart.

It's like the clouds have left my mind and gone up where they belong. It's the most incredible feeling of flying.

To take it back to some natural philosophy, I now understand a little bit more about what our ancient Greek philosophers, like Plato, we're talking about in terms of building a Republic in which everyone in the civilization would have their own role, their own responsibility, based on what they were called to do. Based on their life's purpose.

Functioning in that way, following your purpose, is the only way for both the individual and the civilization as a whole to become most successful and happy. In doing so, it would bring betterment to themselves and the entire community around them. It would make for an ideal civilization.

It took me a really long time to get here. It took years of thinking. Reading. Listening. It took some bravery. It took being willing to give something up to get something more.

I don't think I understood that one until I started ebbing away at little things, giving up little things I couldn't do anymore. They just held me back. They're different for everyone, but for me: drinking alcohol, doom scrolling on social media, browsing phone and television apps... all needed to be replaced with better things, like hydration, reading, the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom, which is such a privilege to pursue.

Take control over the channels that are streaming noise and energy into your head. There's a sort of power that you gain by being able to control what you put in and what you expel out. My own result: I just feel like I'm flying through the clouds. 

I hope all of my family, my friends, my colleagues can figure out what it is that makes them tick. Pursue their own destiny. Find these kind of connections. Figure out how to live in such a way that your heart is light. And you'll just float and everything you do. A smart person on a bench told me, heaven will be open to you, you just have to ask.

Thank you for reading. Have a safe flight!
​

Flight from Nevada to Florida, December 5, 2023. (Love that light spark on the wing!)

NYC Harry Potter Experience "vision" in the clouds, during family visit on July 19, 2023: Your potential is as big as the gourds in Hagrid's pumpkin patch.