#MondayMotivation: Find Your Own Damn Candle

Greetings, dear Readers!

I found myself in a bit of a pickle for today's #MondayMotivation, but luckily, fate provided. The message for today is this:

Find Your Own Damn Candle

I was, as I often do, looking through motivational quotes and stories for inspiration, and nothing seemed to catch my eye. I was about to move on and try something else, when a small message caught my eye:

"Good People Are Like Candles; The Burn Themselves Up To Give Others Light.".

I'm sorry... what?! Let me get this straight: To be a good person, I have to burn myself out? I know the little message probably wasn't meant in the way my mind interpreted it. The idea was probably to live a life that was an example to people around you - and that's a great idea that we can get behind. But for that brief moment, the message became something completely different to me, and I felt that, somehow, there was truth in it.

Think about it for a little bit. How often don't we do exactly that? We decide that we want to be the benchmark. We want to be the person that shines the brightest, to have the world see us and aspire to us - to be the very embodiment of the saying, "The Candle That Burns Twice as Bright, Burns Twice as Fast.". For some people, living life like that is perfectly fine with it - it's all they want.

What really got me was that it was said 'Good People Like Candles.' - and therein lies the rub. 

I have goals and targets and dreams that I aspire to every day. I try to be supportive of others and inspire them with words and actions - but there comes a point where a line must be drawn. I'm not going to burn myself out, or turn my hopes and dreams into ashes, just to be the candle you need to find your own way in life. Sure, I'll light a way (not the way), but it's not my responsibility to do that until others finally open their eyes.

Does that mean that I'm not a 'good person'? HELL NO. 

It means that I'm a person willing to share, willing to lead, and yes, even willing to burn for others... to an extent. There's a point where 'motivation and inspiration' crosses over into self-sacrifice and self-destruction.

I'm not saying that you shouldn't help motivate other people. I'm definitely not saying that you should leave them floundering in a quagmire of self-doubt/self-loathing/aimlessness/'enter word here'. What I am saying is that you shouldn't become the only link they have to finding their way to their own goals, even if it's at the cost of your own aspirations. And besides, if they forever live by your light, how will they ever learn to conquer their own fears of the dark?

"So what would be the middle ground," I found myself thinking. As I said, we all want to be that light that motivates and inspires others - we just don't want to burn away because of it. For some reason, the saying, "Give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day; teach a man to fish, and he'll eat for a lifetime." occurred to me. It resulted in an entirely new thought, and one I'd like to end this on:

"Instead of being the candle that burns out to light part of the way, be the light that guides people to their own candles, and help them light their own."


Until Next Week!