WHAT can you GIVE in return for your LIFE?

I'm not sure how to answer this question.  Of course, at first glance, I can give nothing for a life that is gift in the first place.  But, I struggle to embody life as gift.  So, my next thought is that I can give myself, poured out in service to others.  In that, I can find meaning and significance.  But, there is the ongoing existential struggle between living in giftedness/significance and mere survival.

I have always been drawn to Thoreau's thoughts on this matter.  My experience is that most people do indeed live lives of quiet desperation.  It is cloaked for most as the pursuit of success.  As Bob Moorehead wisely tells: We’ve learned how to make a living, but not a life. We’ve added years to life not life to years. We’ve been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor. We conquered outer space but not inner space. We’ve done larger things, but not better things. We’ve cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul. We’ve conquered the atom, but not our prejudice. We write more, but learn less. We plan more, but accomplish less. We’ve learned to rush, but not to wait.

 If I oscillate between survival and significance, what must I give up to live fully into a life of significance?  For me the answer lies in giving up people pleasing (and a false sense of success) to be true to self and God.  I find this increasingly difficult in a culture that has abandoned character in favor of personality.  As I started reading on yesterday the book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a Word that Can't Stop Talking, the author describes: "In the culture of character, the ideal self was serious, disciplined, and honorable.  What counted was not so much the impression one made in public as how one behaved in private."  

This rings true to me. In the current culture of personality, the characteristics that are valued are the "personas" we can create/forge/fake based on newly prescribed ideals: magnetism/gregariousness, outward appearance, and popularity.  For those drawn to the inner life this becomes problematic and leads to despairing.  As someone told me recently, "you belong to another era" because I do indeed crave a return to a culture of character rather than personality.

If I base my significance in the belief that God has knit me for a particular vocation in this life, then it is easier to pursue that calling with honesty and disciplined virtue and to forget about personality or popularity.  The irony is that such a dedication requires ultimately that I transcend myself, lose myself, and become free in an identity that is not wholly mine.  I do believe that desperation can be sidestepped in this emptying, what scripture calls kenosis.

As an introvert, my dreams generally center upon getting away from so-called civilization and living much like Thoreau.  I joke with friends and family about my tiny house dream:

The challenge, aside from running away to a remote location to find God in nature, is how I find significant living right here, right now, with the people and places God has put in my path.  How might I become the person God created me to be?

Today, I will seek that song that is still inside, beyond the desperation and exasperation.  I will run in the sun, read in the sun, spend time with God and my loved ones.  I will find my identity in breath and in song, repentance and release.