How to Be Here: A Guide to Creating a Life Worth Living

by Rob Bell

Your blinking line is whatever sits in front of you waiting to be brought into existence.

But when we’re facing the blinking line and we talk about bringing something new into existence, we’re expressing a different view of the world, one in which the world is unfinished

Nothing is set in stone or static here; the whole thing is in motion, flush with vitality and pulsing with creative energy.

The poet wants us to know that God is looking for partners, people to help co-create the world.

What you do with your life is fundamentally creative work.

All work is ultimately creative work because all of us are taking part in the ongoing creation of the world.

All work is creative work because all work is participating in the ongoing creation of the world.

How we respond to what happens to us—especially the painful, excruciating things that we never wanted and we have no control over—is a creative act.

Who are you to do this? And that question can be paralyzing. It can prevent us from overcoming inertia. It can cause crippling doubt and stress. It can keep us stuck on the couch while life passes us by.

If you focus on who you aren’t, and what you don’t have, or where you haven’t been, or skills or talents or tools or resources you’re convinced aren’t yours, precious energy will slip through your fingers that you could use to do something with that blinking line.

Decide now that you will not spend your precious energy speculating about someone else’s life and how it compares with yours.

Whoever you are and whatever work you do, no one has ever lived your life with your particular challenges and possibilities.

“You” hasn’t been attempted before.

It can be intimidating, or it can be liberating, because if everybody starts with a blank page, then everybody starts from the same place.

Your ikigai is that sense you have when you wake up that this day matters, that there are new experiences to be had, that you have work to do, a contribution to make. Sometimes this is referred to as your calling, other times your vocation, your destiny, your path. Your ikigai is your reason for being.

Getting a paycheck for doing that thing you love may actually ruin it.

To be here is to embrace the spiritual challenge of your ikigai, doing the hard work of figuring out who you are and what you have to give the world.

Nerves are God’s gift to you, reminding you that your life is not passing you by. Make friends with the butterflies.

Where you sit, the tools you use, the physical environment you inhabit, the rhythm of your day and week, the rituals that remind you who you are and what you’re doing here— these details are important because how you do anything is how you do everything.