Sparking Success or Significance?
Success is a Need-love.
C.S. Lewis identified the difference between “Need-Loves” and Loves of Appreciation. Need-loves are those we desperately seek after.
Thirst, for example. When we are lapping a dry tongue and suddenly have a cool, refreshing glass of water. We can say that we “love” it, but as soon as our thirst is quenched that love is gone. Our attention is on something else.
Loves of Appreciation are those things that we do not so much seek after, but that surprise us with their beauty. C.S. Lewis speaks of the scents of a garden as we walk along a path. Suddenly the smells jump to our nose. We do not tire of the smells.
Attaining that brand new car we always wanted; Success. Good job. But, as soon as the thrill wears off, what does it mean.
If Success is a Need-Love, then Significance, fulfillment, are Loves of Appreciation.
Waking in Haiti with the surprising smells of a fire cooking an unexpected egg and chicken; Loves of Appreciation. Whether or not we eat the meal, the morning, camp-fire smells in a new land are something we never tire of.
Humanitarian work is the same.
Even though to do such work would demand that we seek after those way to serve, the surprising beauties that arise in the situations are such that fill us to no end, something that we could experience daily without fail.
Success is the love of the minute.
Significance is the love of a lifetime.
Success is the immediate need being met.
Significance is having an unintended sense arouse, brushed lightly and potently so as to enrapture our attention for ever.
Sparking may take us through the path of Success. But, rest assured, we will not stay here. Successes are fine. They are good. They are enjoyable.
Significance is the pursuit of the Sparked. It is the ongoing State of the Sparked.
A life in expectant attentiveness for the moment of surprising Significance, often typified as a life in the service of others, will inevitably lead you into many Successes. But the real reward is in the beauty itself.
This is a state of both peace and passion; at once pursuing beauty and being surprised by it, of reverie and awe.
This is the State of the Spark.
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