Dive Into Your Imagination

"Do not ask yourself what the world needs.  Ask yourself what makes you come alive and go and do that because what the world needs is people who have come alive."  I still pinch myself every time I fly back to "Sweet Home Chicago" to present at schools, organizations and of course Our World Underwater, celebrating it’s 40th year.  Our World Underwater changes lives.  It is as simple as that.  Thousands of people flock in sub-zero weather to spend three days dreaming of another life.  I should know, Stan Waterman’s film on the creatures of Lembeh Strait viewed for the first time at a Saturday night film festival in the mid-90’s changed my adult life.  I remember watching the unbelievable as real and vowing to myself, "I have to go there and see these creatures!"  Can you think of an experience that changed your life and caused a series of events to take you in another direction?  Have you ever dared to come to the edge of life as you knew it and take a quantum leap of faith and having the courage to try?  What is stopping you?  I jumped a decade ago and never looked back.  One week ago I was in a studio in New Jersey with legendary Stan Waterman recording the Narration for Sensational Seas 2 and we had a blast!

During the past two weeks the world watched the worst catastrophe in Haiti unfold, and like our economy, the worst has not been seen.  During times of crisis I am  amazed at the highways of thoughts and feelings that emerge, yet I believe in hope.  On one page we are shown the devastation, and on another the jubilation, with people praising God and rejoicing.  I am reminded of the words from Viktor Frankl in which he suggested people survived the concentration camps because of three reasons:  they had something bigger that they believed in, they had loved ones, and they also believed tomorrow would be a better place.  I found myself donating to organizations committed to making clean drinking water available for Haitians.  I met Ken Surritte, the founder of www.WaterIsLife.com who worked with USAid to get individual water filters into the hands of people in Haiti.  I wish I could have dropped everything to go and document, help, and be a part of the recovery, but I also had commitments I could not break.  It is painful to watch the news sometimes and in life, we all need a daily dose of inspiration.  Inspiration drives imagination, which causes innovation.  I found my inspiration for life through the Ocean and was able to use my imagination to create and drive innovation and help change the way we view the Ocean and ourselves.  Every person needs inspiration during these times.  What inspires you?  What do you imagine for your life and your world?  Living in the Galapagos for three months gave me a profound insight to inspiration that I have carried for the past decade.  Here is the story of how I was able to go.

I had just received my 100 ton Captain’s License and planned on continuing my underwater photography and filmmaking career on the Conception, one of the boats in the Truth Aquatics fleet here in Southern California.  I was going to be second captain and train under the infamous Jerry Boylan who is a salty sea Captain who spent his toddler years living on Anacapa Island because his father was the lighthouse keeper.  It was all agreed upon but then the phone rang.  Peter Hughes Diving called me and wanted to know if I wanted to go and train the crew aboard the Sky Dancer, a luxurious diving vessel that would be touring the northern and southern islands of the Galapagos.  When I told Jerry of the opportunity, he said, "Annie, the Channel Islands will always be here, there are not many opportunities to visit the Galapagos." And so with his blessings, I had only a few days to get ready for departure. 

"Ideals are like stars; you will not succeed in touching them with your hands, but like the seafaring man on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them you reach your destiny."
- Carl Schurz
 1829-1906, Politician

The high school I attended in Chicago was named after this great man and when I read this quote, it touched me for many times I have felt like a wayfarer following the stars in my life, and now I believe I have embraced my destiny.  One week ago I was on a plane heading from Santa Barbara to North Carolina to speak to students in the University of North Carolina Journalism department as part of ScienceOnline2010 outreach thanks to a connection with Bora Zivkovic and Stephanie Willen Brown.  We posted our first podcast of the speech and although I do not have a regular show scheduled, we are going to start recording more and continue posting inspirational messages and speeches.  There is so much that has happened over the course of the past week, I do not even know where to begin. I squeezed in a field trip to the Duke University Virtual Reality Lab in conjunction with #scio10 to Dive Into Alcohol.  There was something about the title that appealed to me.  I wanted to attend this field trip for two reasons, to see how technology is being used to teach and also to see what happens on the molecular level of alcohol.

Lately, I have felt like I have been down a long and winding road.  I have been very frustrated because there have been so many forks in the road.  The two paths turn to four and eight and I have been unable to make decisions, so I am stagnant looking at all the choices, saying now what?  Now what? 

And then I heard another describe his experience, "Annie, what if all the roads lead to the same path?" 
What?  What do you mean?

 "Annie, what if you were to float above where you are right now and look from far above at your life and you were to see that the path that you are on, the one that forks, twists and splits into 8 paths, rejoins in the future no matter which direction you choose, to form one path again." 

And suddenly, it hit me.  All roads lead to the same path.  It does not matter which I choose, except that it is the path that I want to choose.  The path I want to wander down, to explore, to live.  And suddenly my soul just opened up with joy as I finally get it.  Live your life how you want too, not how someone else sees it.  You know inside what makes you happy, now go and do what makes you come alive.  Our world needs you to come alive and what makes me come alive is helping others wake up.  Now, Wake Up and Begin Again!  Change your mind and your life will follow!

Gratitude and Service are my two words for 2010 as my heart overflows with gratitude and I want to live a life of Service.  At the strike of 12 on New Years Eve, I found myself completely sober and fully alive in Ashland, Oregon as I had just completed the Neale Donald Walsch Holiday Retreat.  The four days we spent exploring the meaning of our lives and who we are completely reset me for the entry into 2010.  Please contact me if you want to know more as I would love to share this experience.  During 2009 there was a lot of unrest happening all around us and I struggled to stay on path with both passion and purpose.  Have you ever felt like you lost your meaning in life and needed to reconnect with your inner desire and purpose?  I found myself questioning the direction I was heading, choices I was making and felt as if I needed to reset my GPS.  What became very clear to me during the workshop and the first week of what will be the BEST year of my life is that I have the ability to create my life.  Yes, you read correctly.  Every moment of everyday I get to create my life exactly the way I choose.  I have written about this before, but in 2010, I am going to live the experience of creating my life.  When we realize that our life is our CHOICE we awaken to a life full of freedom.