Your Unique Expression

"There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique, and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium; and be lost.
The world will not have it.
It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.
You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you."

~ Martha Graham

In all of creation, there is only one of you, only one of me. Only one who can do the work you or I are in this world to do; only one who can be the fullness of expression that you or I embody. Sometimes I forget that. In my rush to make my world conform to the way I think it ought to be, I punch down and deflate the clay that defines me.

Think of what the world would have missed if Martha Graham confined herself to a box that did not include dance. Or if Mohandas Gandhi continued to live the way South Africa had told him he had to live instead of non-violently defining how he wanted to live. Or if my maternal grandfather had not left Poland to work in the steel mills of Chicago. Or any other number of people had allowed themselves to remain as they were told their lives should be.

I choose to march to my own drummer, to be a nonconformist. I choose to follow the star-strewn path of the dreamer, the storyteller, the myth-maker. What do you choose? In what direction will you point your life? Whose path will you follow?

Stargirl 4

What qualities makes you a star? What do you offer the world that's unique ~ totally your own?

When I consider these questions, I find myself thinking that there's nothing about me that's so unique that I'm important or needed in this world. Truly, life would go on without me. That's not depression talking, it's a kind of realism. Yet... yet.... it doesn't tell the whole story. It leaves out some significant pieces of the picture that I'm part of.

Unique about me ~ well, doing this blog. Others may be doing something similiar, but they aren't doing the same blog. Another unique quality: being the mother of my daughter. She is who she is because I am who I am ~~ and because I've been a significant part of her life. No one else could have interacted with her, taught her, loved her, the way I have. I also have a unique skill set ~ not an odd one, just my own particular combination of skills that make me a unique friend, teacher, partner, parent, healer, learner. All ME.

So, what makes YOU unique? What's your inner star?