INSPIRATION

When was the last time that you were inspired? 

Do you recall? 

Have you ever been inspired?

Before I became a cancer patient and even before High School, I experienced inspiration all the time but certainly not daily as I did later.  I was inspired by music heard on my cigarette pack size transistor radio and by black and white images on my 8” Admiral Television.  I was inspired by percussion rhythms I heard being played by marching bands and Latin American musicians. 

I was inspired by the art of Monet, the architecture of Wright, the poetry of Poe, and the counter-balance acting of Thespians.  I was inspired by the reflections in puddles of rain, sunsets and sunrises, and the falling splendor of snow.  I have been inspired by all sorts of words, sounds, images, and all sorts of creatures large and small. 

I have been inspired by touch and the sensation of touch and movement.  I have been inspired by fear and the hollowness of frightening moments, trepidations, and reluctance.  I have been inspired by the awesome universe and by wonder of life.

In fact, I have been inspired by wondering all my life.

The word "inspiration" comes from the Latin noun inspiratio and from the verb inspirare. Inspirare is a compound term resulting from the Latin prefix in (inside, into) and the verb spirare (to breathe). Inspirare meant originally "to blow into", as for example in the sentence of the Roman poet Ovid: "conchae [...] sonanti inspirare iubet"^[2] ("he orders to blow into the resonant [...] shell"). In classic Roman times, inspirare had already come to mean "to breathe deeply" and assumed also the figurative sense of "to instill [something] in the heart or in the mind of someone".

In Christian theology, the Latin word inspirare was already used by some Church Fathers in the first centuries to translate the Greek term pnéo. When Jerome translated the Greek text of the Bible into the language of the common people of Latium (the region of central western Italy in which the city of Rome is located), in the passage of the 2 Tim 3.16-17 he translated the Greek theopneustos as divinitus inspirata ("divinely breathed into").

What do you have breathed into you?

For most of us, all of mankind included, we are inspired by money, power, and sex including a wide variety of themes tangent to the 3 main points that has become a spiritual trinity for us.  But, isn’t life more than that?

The wonder of birth in all species is enough inspiration to keep us entertained a lifetime, rejoicing in that phenomenon through our poetry, music, art, sculpture, dance, and clothes.  It does not matter where you live and what species you represent, the miracle of birth is the same.

As one ages and realizes that life passed by from age 10 to 60, in the blink of an eye, one realizes that there are no do-overs that life is what it is and no more and that life from age 60 to 80 not even half of what was previously lived will pass by at a rate much, much faster or so it will seem.  And, what you thought was not important becomes more important than you could ever have imagined, leaving you inspired by how little time is actually left.

In case you are wondering, this has nothing to do with “stopping to smell the roses;” although, that is equally as important, but this is all about having something breathed into you that literally changes your life.