A Kind of Magic

“One dream…one soul…one prize one goal
…One golden glance of what should be
Its a kind of magic
One shaft of light that shows the way, no mortal man can win this day
It’s a kind of magic”
—Queen, “A Kind of Magic”

In the ebb and flow of everyday life, people can often lose sight of the goal. A study I recall seeing some years back indicated that the most successful leaders in the business world believed that they had a distinct calling, a destined purpose, and that drove them to succeed in a world where others could not.

All my life, free choice aside, I have felt that I’ve a purpose about me: A destiny. Life is a story that unfolds at whichever pace that you allow it, complete with chapters and climaxes. If you are willing to take the time to step back from the everyday monotony that is life you may find the opportunity to read between the lines, in the absence of life just coming out and telling you things. Sometimes life will come right out and tell you something, sometimes it will be more subtle. Once upon a time, while on a tour in Honduras, I had a chaplain—a lieutenant colonel that was a Vietnam-era medic in the Special Forces—approach me (although he was my superior, we was very friendly and we had become good acquaintances) and inform me that I was destined for great things. At the ripe age of 18 I was partly naïve to the full depth of what he was saying, partly stupefied with the notion of what he was saying, and partly feeling happy because it affirmed something deep inside of me.

Have you ever asked yourself what kind of story your life will be? Could it be a tragedy, a love story, or an epic? Will stories be told about your ill exploits, or will people recall your good repute that you have with the community? One thing I’ve learned lately is that it is never too late in your life to make yours the story that you’ve always longed it would be. Focus and effort will beget competence, further begetting confidence in your abilities in shaping the environment around you. The trick: Work on those things that are directly within your influence and that area of influence will grow, given time.

Life is the content that fills the chapters of our lives. Some sentences are simple prose, some dialogue can be profound, and there may be plot twists that boggle the mind: But in the end it is the story that we have woven to fit our personality and how we interact with the world around us is ultimately the one that we’ve chosen to live, the one that we’ve approved to be published, and the one that we’ve written.

Let tomorrow be the first day of the rest of your life written however you’d like it.