What makes you tick?

By Hyon O’Brien

I do not know how to ride a bike. So last Christmas, I asked my husband to buy me a tricycle. For the past four months it has been great riding this tricycle with my two dogs in the basket and exploring my neighborhood park and the path parallel to the ocean that’s right outside our apartment.

I know this adult version of a tricycle is quite bulky and not too cool, and people do stare at me as I pass by. However, each time I am on this bike, I experience a new sense of joy and freedom. My heart is filled with gratitude that I am out in nature enjoying the wild flowers along the way, sea grape trees with their colorful leaves, palm trees, and the sea breeze as well as the sound of the waves. As I stop and gaze at the peaceful waters, with cute sand pipers dancing back and forth before the waves, and soak in the warm sun on my shoulder, playing with my dogs while picking up many sea shells dotted along the sand beach, I can’t help but be flooded with a wonderful sense of well-being. At that singular moment, I am standing on a slice of paradise.

What makes you tick? What turns you on? What delights you the most? When do you feel the happiest? What kindles your passion? What makes your life worth-living? What is your reason for living? What is the purpose of your life? What is the life that you love to live? These are loaded questions but at some point in our life, we need to confront them. The earlier the better.

What would my answers be?

I became a Christian during my freshman year of college. However I was a nominal one with no clear understanding of what it meant to follow Christ or believe in God. It took me 15 years of searching to be at a place where I was convinced that I was created for a reason and another fifteen years more to figure out how I was going to live my life with God in the center.

Only after I gained this insight did everything else fall into place. With life priorities becoming sharper, I learned how I need to spend my time, energy, and money. Along the way, I also discovered my talents and gifts. I found out that my point of joy was when I help others, sharing my resources and connecting with people. So I know for the rest of my life, I shall be devoting my time to helping others discover their own gifts that will help serve people and love God. The advantage of knowing ``what makes me tick” is the elimination of wandering time, doubts, wasted motion, and false movements. Knowing clearly what is the most important thing in one’s life keeps one from deviating from that path. Clarity of life purpose energizes and motivate one constantly.

The ordinary sky becomes brilliant, common clouds take on an enchanting look, wild flowers become the face of universal beauty, sand, sea shells and sea birds turn into agents of joy. Faces of laughing children lift up a notch our happiness index and make us face the world with more enthusiasm. Watching a film and reading those books that affirm love and goodness in people confirms that indeed life is worth living.

One can get a high from painting, reading, writing, visiting with friends and family. Even talking to a total stranger becomes a sparkling occasion for rejoicing.

The great German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) is SO right to say that ``in nature we never see anything isolated, but everything in connection with something else which is before it, beside it, under it and over it.” We do see things according to the inner eye, a state of mind and attitude that we carry around within ourselves.

So as spring is all around us, let us examine our life so far. Let’s get to know ourselves as Socrates (469 B.C.-399 B.C.) urged us. In doing so, we will get to know how we need to live. But let’s remember that merely knowing is not enough. We must apply and do something about that insight.

Yes, it certainly makes me tick when I am engaged in conversation with God. Thanks be to God for that. I pray that all of you who haven’t found exactly what makes you tick, you will find it soon. You will bring joy not only to yourself but to those who come in contact with you by this discovery. As Roman philosopher Seneca (ca 4-65) reminds us, ``when a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind”.

May you know which direction your ship is heading and get there safely!!!

Hyon O'Brien is a former reference librarian now living in the United States. She can be reached at hyonobrien@gmail.com.

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