The first person I remember idolizing was Rickey Henderson. The infamous base stealer played baseball with a swagger and passion that said to me: “live fearlessly, play fearlessly, give your unique gift to the world.” Rickey would dive recklessly, head first, into every base he stole. He set the record for stolen bases and also set the record for getting caught stealing. He was a wild man. He personified joy and rebellion. Everything Rickey did on the baseball field spoke to me at levels in my soul I didn’t comprehend at 7 years old, but understand now that I was being shown how to live my life.
His number was 24, and that number became my number. Everything I associated myself with, I tried to incorporate the number 24, in it. It now has become a sacred number to my children. 23 was the number of Michael Jordan. 23 represented the thing that everybody idolized, but 24 became the number of the rebel, to me. 24 became a symbol of doing things the way the soul wants them done–not what the world tries to get you to do.
2023 was, without question, the year I will always remember as the time period that nearly broke me. My entire life I had lived the “Rickey” way, but as I became an adult, I learned that passion and purpose often got you into trouble–especially with the forces that govern so much of how we live. Companies, churches, school teachers, universities, family members, friends, and myriad other influences encourage us to mold into comfortable creatures that align with the values and expectations of whatever lords over us. These systems and people become very rewarding sources of sustaining substance to make us feel secure and free from concern for potential harm.
2023 was the culminating end to a long struggle, after my Uncle’s suicide in 2019, to fit all the worlds I had created and participated into a box that made sense. My search for meaning and purpose through every nook of spiritual practice, my marriage, my work as a political consultant, my children, my church–all of it had to gel together, somehow, and I wanted desperately to do it all with an open heart. However, what life needed to teach me was that the flow of our existence is an incomprehensible gift of unknown blessing that does not fit itself into small boxes that keep us certain and safe. Life puts us in this moment. There is no church or family or organized structure of any kind that breathes for us and thinks for us. Life guides us far more lovingly and abundantly than any of our outside constructs have the capabilities to.
2024 is not 2023. 2024 is a symbol of life’s gift, to me. It is the year I believe we all recognize what we have forgotten. It is the year we remember the Rickey Henderson’s that spoke to us when we were young. How we move and take action in this world is a choice that generates from one of two places: 1) our intuitive knowing in the most silent and secret places of our hearts 2) a determination to fit our character, bodies, and senses into what we see and learn around us.
Who was your childhood hero and why was that hero such an inspiration to you?
If you didn’t have a childhood hero, can you remember what you dreamt of becoming and why?
The world around us is designed to inspire our singular unique gifts to develop and be shared. We recognize symbols, quotes, other people, books, movies and identify with these things–not to mirror them, but to realize what we are meant to create through our lives. The creations of the collective (companies, governments, religion, sports teams, book clubs, you name it) are not meant to be sustained or destroyed but to be motivators to ourselves, to unveil ourselves.
In 2024 I will not become Rickey Henderson, but I will continue to align with what Rickey Henderson symbolized in my own soul. Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi, Indiana Jones, and so many others have been extraordinary influences on me, but trying to mimic them or accomplish what they accomplished is not my life’s purpose. These people are speaking to my being–to the truth of what I am.
Identify your loftiest dreams. Remember the grandest things you set your sights on at one time, or another, in your life. See these elements and stories as your soul reflecting encouragement to discover your truth. It has always been there. We all have spent far too much of our time attempting to fit ourselves into the things we feel are good and right, rather than being the good and right thing itself.
Rebel against the limits you’ve allowed to dictate how you use your gifts. Open to the reality that you have false concepts and people in your life and let life shed you of what you do not need. 2024 is not the year the world will end, it is the year of finally knowing what each of our purposes are and living them without fear. Elections, world events, taxes, tragedies, exciting spectacles, Super Bowl champions, and all the other things in life we are accustomed to caring about will happen, but whatever it is you choose to pay attention to, remember, that your life is not tethered to the outcomes of any of these things. Your life is something that has called to you since you were a child and will never stop trying to pull you out of your slumber and into your purpose.
