The Muse In You

[Image 1] by Thalia Black

One of the most important human experiences, at least in my opinion, is that of being useful. And, that is a major statement coming from someone who lives and works to immerse in aesthetics and the beauty and enjoyment of pleasing moments found in the pursuit of the good life.

To be useful, both to others and to oneself, is the noblest pursuit of humankind.

To clarify, I’m not suggesting that any kind of usefulness is worthy of pursuit, although someone who feels useful is much happier than someone who doesn’t, even if that usefulness isn’t award-winning.

What I’m suggesting is that the pinnacle of human existence is recognizing one’s inherent value, one’s unique contribution, and how one becomes useful in promoting, producing, and perpetuating the health and well-being, happiness, and prosperity of the human family in a way that also fulfills and edifies the giver.

But what does being useful look like, especially for those who are born with what are culturally considered disabilities of mind and body?

What does being useful look like for ordinary folk who live out their days outside of the limelight, in poverty, or in any form of obscurity?

What does it mean to be useful?

Innate Design

In my work with identity over the last 10+ years, I’ve mentored a variety of individuals from children to mature adults.

The common denominator between them all is a desire to comprehend and express their innate design—the thing that drives and motivates them individually—and with the realization of that design, to bring it to life by using it to serve others in an authentic way; to matter as a unique individual, not simply because one is a part of a larger whole but because one offers unique value.

Intuitively, humans want to matter, even when they believe they don’t, most often because they have been taught to conform to standards that are much lower and lesser than what they are capable of becoming.

There has always been a portion of society, whether globally or nationally, that believe that children are born blank slates ready to be molded and shaped into cultural stereotypes.

As a mother and identity researcher, I have found the opposite to be true. Babies and children are not born into this world blank slates for self-serving parents and a hungry-for-control society to raise for service to a self-perpetuating cultural framework of a scientifically determined, purposeless human existence.

Yes, humans have a great capacity for adaptation and conformity. They want to fit in, be liked, be understood, receive praise and acceptance, and improve their status. So, they allow themselves to be molded and shaped, even as small children.

However, children are not born empty slates waiting to be filled with cultural constraints by parents, teachers, the state, and the long list of do-gooders who need a social project they push children into in order to feel fulfilled or purposeful.

They are born with unique attributes, abilities, and potential. They are like a seed lying dormant waiting for the right conditions to sprout.

Some children will be born into “the right conditions” and a family that recognizes potential and authenticity as divine gifts. Those children will be given the nutrient soil to explore and discover their innate and unique design. These children will gain the confidence to exert their design and use it to become useful in fulfilling and satisfying ways.

Other children will be born into environments that are not so supportive. In fact, they will quickly learn that the only way for them to be useful is to hide their innate desires and design from a hostile world and conform to normative standards, expectations, opinions, and even abusive and oppressive control in its many forms. Their gifts may lie dormant their entire lives, or at some point of awakening may be realized later in life when one has exhausted one’s ability to adapt.

Humans are not born blank slates in service to the oppressive and ungrateful horde. They are unique, useful in their own right, and capable of much more than society and culture expect and teach them to be.

Being Useful Is All About Design

Being useful is less about doing what one is told so others can benefit from one’s labor and more about doing what one was designed to do.

For example, a pick up truck is not a sports car, yet it is useful to those who need and want what it offers, and although some desperate individual may attempt to make a sports car useful in the same way a truck is useful, the sports car will always fall short.

Like filling the back seat of a sports car with fill dirt is a massive misuse of its design, so to is filling a human with only stereotypical, cultural expectations and then expecting them, and everyone else, to thrive.

Although humans are not cars, the metaphor applies.

Boiling humans down into familial, cultural, governmental, and social slaves is degrading and destructive to their innate and intelligent design.

Humans, individually, have unique design elements, and I’m not even, in any way, making references here to gender and biology.

Instead, I am referring to the totality of an individual’s make up, their spirit, mind, body, emotions—the preferences, abilities, values, experiences, and thought process that combine to create a whole person.

We are not clones of one another. We are different, individual, and unique, and that separation is an important distinction.

To be useful, one must rise above the social slave-labor mindset and see oneself as an entity both separate and distinct, as well as a viable source of usefulness to others.

Innate design is not just a symbolic potential. It is the realization of one’s inherent propensity.

One’s design was meant to be useful, to offer space where there once was void, to offer succor and care where there was emptiness, to offer wisdom where there was ignorance, to offer insight where there was rigidity.

Those who break the bonds of cultural, political, religious, and social norms to pursue the realization of their own design—what one does naturally and in a way no one else does—not because of destiny, but because they must out of proclivity, are simply answering the call of their inner workings.

This is not a selfish endeavor, to pursue what one was designed to do.

It is certainly a fulfilling and satisfying pursuit to the individual seeking more than culture can avail. But in the end, knowing what one uniquely has to offer is useful to both the giver (the individual) and the receiver (others) because there are singular problems that require singular solutions that culture and society, in their constant need for self-perpetuation, often overlook.

Just as the person attempting to use a sports car as a pick up truck because that is all they have, culture will only ever have the capacity to provide a certain measure of support to the human family.

It takes someone with an individual approach, who is able to take a step back from the cultural norms to gain and offer singular solutions that those wrapped up in the perpetuation of culture and society alone simply can’t see.

The Muse In You

The Greek Muses were more than just female deities and daughter’s of Zeus. They wielded and guarded the gifts of the sciences and the arts.

The word muse has come to denote a lesser meaning than it once had. To be a muse has been reduced down to some pathetic form of worship and inspiration.

I would like to revive the greater understanding of the word from worship and inspiration, to that of an endowment of guardianship.

Women have an innate sense of guardianship, therefore it’s a logical conclusion that muses would be female considering their heritage of matriarchal concerns. Therefore, their roles as mother-guardian of the sacred divine gifts that inspire man and womankind to greatness, are a natural assumption.

Yet, like matriarchs do not horde their instinctual and inherent gifts of nurturing their offspring, and other’s, the Muses didn’t simply possess the gifts of the sciences and the arts, they protected, defended, and bestowed them.

They bore the responsibility of them and only inspired those worthy to utilize and wield the power of those gifts.

However, men and women have their own spheres of influence and are, therefore, guardians in their own rights.

In an analogous way, every human, like the ancient Muses, bears the responsibility and gifts of a specific design.

One’s design is a personal and individual heritage, an endowment of rights, privileges, abilities, values, and attributes that, when combined, understood and utilized, make one great and powerful in their own individual and unique sphere of influence.

Innate design is one’s muse-like gift that one can inspire, uplift, and edify the world with. It is an endowment of power and purpose one should take seriously, one should guard and protect, and offer to others because of its benefits and usefulness.

Yet, innate design is not, like in communism, forced on the individual. There is nothing fatalistic about one’s unique design, in the sense that one can choose to be who one is. One is not controlled by their design or forced to become something they neither chose nor desire.

Instead, one’s innate design is who one is, who one has chosen to be, and who one intends to become.

If one has the privilege of stepping into one’s power, one will find it to be the most fulfilling and exhilarating experience of their lives.

It is a joy and honor to be oneself fully and to enact and enable one’s attributes on behalf of oneself and others.

When one finds themselves to be useful in a way that is also simultaneously personal and authentically pleasing, one is naturally fulfilled and satisfied.

Sports cars are not for everyone. But for those who enjoy that type of design, for what it was intended to be, the acceleration, the handling, and the lines and shapes, the mechanical sophistication and status the appearance provides, to own and drive a sports car is a great pleasure!

And, to live the measure of one’s innate design is like that, a pleasure!

Conclusion

Every person is a gift. Every person is useful. Every person was designed to offer something of value when they are acting from a genuine desire to be useful and share their design.

One could argue that there are humans on this planet that do not deserve that moral distinction, that some people are so bad there is nothing about their design and behavior that could be called good or “gift”.

One could also argue that disability, disease, and other human ailments, make innate design seem like a silly notion. Why would someone be designed with flaws, if they are designed at all?

The question I would pose is, are the many things we consider to be flaws, really flaws?

What we, as a human family, learn from so-called disability, disease, and flaws are often gifts of the most humbling and life-changing kind. What some consider flaws and mistakes, others find to be examples of great and valuable worth.

Certainly, humans are not equal in every sense. We are not clones of one another, and we have the choice to use the gifts we were given to oppress, abuse, take advantage of, and do heinous and diabolically evil things to one another.

Gifts—the attributes and abilities of human design—can be tossed aside, they can be leveraged, they can be seen as disabilities and disasters, distort one’s sense of importance, and they can be used by the bearer to do unimaginable harm.

However, gifts can also be shared, enjoyed, used to improve lives, inspire, elevate, and enrich the lives of both giver and receiver.

But that is true for just about any aspect of human experience. One can do what one will with what they are given.

Humans, as we have all witnessed, have the power to do what they will, even within the confines and constructs of culture and society. They are their own masters, even when enslaved by the myriad of different forms of human oppression, including one’s own thoughts.

Wielding one’s power and one’s gifts is something we all must learn how to do.

Those who use their power to harm, lose their usefulness. Those who use their power to uplift, inspire, and exalt others become more and more useful.

The Muse inside of each of us, that powerful design we each possess that fills a void in the human family, is only useful if actions are taken to make it so.

Einstein had to choose to be more than a patent clerk, to enact his innate design. Hitler also had choices about how to express and utilize the gifts that he possessed. That is true for each of us.

Regardless of whether one believes in intelligent design, god(s), religion, science, or any other belief system, empirical or not, design is not a foreign concept. In fact, it is so second nature it is often overlooked with regards to identity.

One can choose to be a useful slave of culture and social expectation, or one can choose to step into a more Muse-like awareness and guardianship, a usefulness that is much more fulfilling and beneficial long-term.

Aren’t you just a little curious what you were designed to do?

Who is the Muse in you?

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