week 2 reading

transformers... more than meets the eye!

Declare yourself to be a contribution.

Throw yourself into life as someone who makes a difference, accepting that you may not understand how or why.

I declare myself a contribution! Those are very strong words to let come from your thoughts of who you are, but it is important that you (I) make a difference whether it is small or big, but that it is a contribution. I must state that I never thought that the word or act of contribution as a game or a gift, but after reading, it is a game the game of life and being someone who believes in a higher being it is synonymous with the idea of having a purpose to contributing to others. "In the game of "contribution" you wake up each day and bask in the notion that you are a gift to others." (page 59) It would seem that most people who enter a career of service, teacher, nurse, doctor, firefighter, attorney, etc. search for this feeling of declaring him/herself as a contribution. The purpose to make a difference/contribution is not for a self reward, but for a greater impact that is seen or not!

Seventeen years ago I declared myself a contribution without even knowing that was what I had done. I knew that I wanted to have impact and make a difference in the lives of youth and it was easy then to accept that I didn't understand the why or how. The possibilities were great, but with time, experiences and others pessimistic views I allowed "my game" to be tainted. The success of my students was always the biggest picture, but all of that transformed me negatively, not realizing until now that all of that time, experience and others were (are) part of the "contribution" game. That part of the game pushed me to move to different possibility for touching the lives of others. "The contribution game appears to have remarkable powers for transforming conflicts into rewarding experiences." (page 59) I declare myself a contribution!

"Naming oneself and others as a contribution produces a shift away from self-concern and engages us in relationship with others that is an arena for making a difference. Rewards in the contribution game are of deep and enduring kind, though less predictable than the trio of money, fame and power that accrue to be the winner in the success game. You never know what they will be or from whence the will come." (page 63) As I ponder on that paragraph it took me back to my life the last three years, wow! I would have never believed that enduring those dreadful collaborations every Tuesday could be a contribution to me and me looking for a "NEW" more rewarding possibility. The relationship with most of those educators was like a bad arranged marriage, that only now do I see the positivity it offered and it was those transformers that rearranged and helped to release my disguise. With that experience I am able to re-declare myself to the game of contribution and know my gifts are opportunities for the "NEW POSSIBILITIES!" It is with that I was (am) able to shift and transform myself to make a difference in the lives of others just on new path!

My passion and commitment to continue to make a difference will leave a mark somewhere in the universe. I declare myself a contribution!

References

image retrieved from http://www.dandare.org/FreeFun/Images/CartoonsMoviesTV/TransformersWallpaper21024.jpg

Zander, B., & Zander-Stone, R., (2000) The art of possibilities: Transforming professional and

personal life. London: Penguin Books.