This move has been amazing, but it’s also proving to be a challenge on many fronts. One of those has to do with my general sense of value or worth. As a man in todays society, we often allow our jobs to define us. There is a pressure, subtle as it may be, to be ’successful’ as a man. Success may be measured differently by different people, but it is often attached to a career, money, ’stuff’, etc. The decision to move to Comox has flown in the face of what many would define as success. It’s not going to make me rich, advance my position in society, or gain me much recognition with my peers. To add to the challenges of this reality I can’t get 3 minutes into a conversation before a person asks me “what brought me to the Island?” or “what do you do?” I find myself wanting to give an impressive answer, and the truth isn’t accomplishing that task.

Over Christmas I picked up a book called Bread For The Journey A Daybook of Wisdom and Faith by Henri Nouwen. This collection of short daily readings has set me to thinking and soul searching on almost a daily basis since. The following writing is from January 4th, and it spoke incredibly deep things to the inner battle for purpose and identity that I find myself in a lot lately.

Fruit’s That Grow In Vulnerability

There is a great difference between successfulness and fruitfulness. Success comes from strength, control, and respectability. A successful person has the energy to create something, to keep control over it’s development, and to make it available in large quantities. Success brings many rewards and often fame. Fruits, however, come from weakness and vulnerability. And fruits are unique. A child is the fruit conceived in vulnerability, community is the fruit born through shared brokenness, and intimacy is the fruit that grows through touching on another’s wounds. Let’s remind one another that what brings us true joy is not successfulness but fruitfulness.

Though I am far from fully living life free from the desire to be ’successful’, I do desire to move more and more from that to desire to one of ‘fruitfulness’. In order to live a fruitful life I believe one must be ready to, at times, fly in the face of the world around them. I pray that my life here on the Island will bear much fruit, and that I will be free from the confines of what I have for so long considered success. I encourage us all, as Henri did, to “remind one another that what brings us true joy is not successfulness but fruitfulness.”