Mudita.

We all have ideas floating around in our head, potential projects and adventures and creative outputs that we want to do, someday, when we have the time. The projects come in many forms — for me, it was to record and publish my own podcast — but are usually driven by a need to do something different, to pursue a passion, to break from the everyday ordinary and be extraordinary, even if just for a few minutes.

Most of the time, we never get around to taking those nebulous ideas and turning them into real activity. It’s understandable: life gets in the way. We have commitments to our career, to our families, to the many other things that make up a normal life; the abnormal, the extraordinary, is easily pushed off to the side. No one should be judged for that — life is hard enough without trying to accelerate it.

That’s why I get so excited when someone is able to take that idea, that dream, and turn it into reality, all while keeping control of who they are and what they do. That’s why I’m enveloped in mudita when a friend tells me that her tiny idea that she told me about over a year ago is no longer a tiny idea but a beautiful project that is culminating in her very own gallery show. That’s why I can’t stop being giddy with happiness whenever I see the smile on a friend’s face after they know they have accomplished something they’ve always wanted to do but never really knew when and where to start.

It is those accomplishments I hold dearest, the ones where a tiny idea that has been put off for too long becomes a reality, through hard work, perseverance, and passion. When that idea grows to be too heavy, ordinary life has to wait while you do something extraordinary.