How to be inspired to breathe life into someone is an essential question in life. Perhaps you noticed that there’s a repetition in the words. Did you catch that the word ‘inspire’ is from the Latin word ‘inspirare’, which means to blow into or breathe upon?
It’s the same root from which we get the word ‘spirit’.
In the Classical world, the word ‘inspirare’ was also used figuratively, to mean to excite, or to inflame.
Whichever way you take it, none of us like being told what to do by other people – unless they inspire us. And for the one doing the inspiring, it’s a fine line between inspiring and preaching. Preaching is one sure way of turning the audience off.
Even worse is when we feel we are being sold to.
The fine art of maintaining just the right tone to build a bond with the listener. Easy to say and not always easy to do.
Perhaps this strikes the right tone of inspiration without superiority in the words in our inspirational card under the title Chasm, featuring a quotation from the British Prime Minister David Lloyd George,
We an all take inspiration from the words: ‘Don’t be afraid to take a big step if one is indicated. You can’t cross a chasm in two small jumps.’
Inspired To Create
With the exception of one of our cards, which reads “Give yourself permission to feel.”, we’ve kept a light touch with words and pictures that are inspiring without being preachy.
One of our cards cocks an old-fashioned eye at optimism to ask whether tomorrow really will be that great. It does it with a tongue in cheek, “The Future’s So Bright’ and a pair of sunglasses against a sun-yellow background. Well, yes, maybe. When is the future ever that bright? Maybe in the International Geophysical Year. Look that song up if you don’t know it.
Or is that too negative? We don’t want to spread negativity and we don’t want to run with the herd and lose ourselves. A lifetime tells us we have to bend a little and be a fool for love or something we believe in. Otherwise we can miss out on life.
How To Be Inspired
This quote sums it up.
One has to laugh before being happy, otherwise one risks dying before having laughed.
If you have not seen the film, Oh Lucky Man, then I recommend it – especially for the ending and the passing on of the knowledge of how to smile.
These days, when individuality is something we aspire to, we definitely don’t want to be shoved in a box and told we are this or that. The message has to be gentle, or there’ll be resistence.
Nearly all of our Inspirational cards use both images and words to convey their message. There’s one card that doesn’t use words. Instead it shows a man at prayer.
The Wall
This inspirational greeting card with a man wearing a fur hat or shtreimel praying at the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem doesn’t need words.
It doesn’t need words to convey a meaning and to be an inspiration.
Actually, there are words in this card, in Hebrew in the open prayer book.
And the man is putting what looks like all of his attention into what he is doing, praying to God.
We say ‘looks like’ because we can never truly know what is in the mind of another human being. My experience of other people is my experience, not their experience of themselves.
But if there is ever a time to do what one professes to be doing, then praying to God is up there with the most significant of them.
For the other cards in our Inspirational cards range, images are married to words.
Tomorrow Card
The Tomorrow card gets its message across with futuristic text in cream and black against a red background says that tomorrow is another day, live it to the full.
What is going to guide one in life?Trying to be normal is not going to satisfy the inner experience. Of course there may be times to appear normal, such as in a courtroom.
So if that is not the answer, then the question still remains – how to be inspired?
Passion, curiosity, and ethics are a better guide to living life.
Let curiosity and zest for life dictate the flow of tomorrow and by living it, we see how to be inspired.
As always, if you like the card, click the image or here Tomorrow – and you will go straight to the product page.
Keep Calm Card
Our Keep Calm inspirational card relies (almost) on words alone to convey its message. The stress is on ‘almost’. because the well-known statement to ‘Keep Calm And Carry On’, shows the last letter hanging half off, held by a single screw. It is of course a reflection on the state of attempting to sail on when in fact everything is hanging by a thread.
That said, to keep calm even when everything is going wrong is better than running around pulling one’s hair out. That doesn’t do anyone any good. Panic is in its very definition contagious.
As Rav Soloveitchik is said to have remarked, life is a narrow bridge and the trick of it is not to shake so violently as to inadvertently throw oneself off.
But to ‘carry on’ when everything is wrong is just madness. That is the reality that the main character in Bridge Over The River Kwai realises very late. Pushing on regardless when it goes against one’s heart is not how to be inspired.
Our inspirational greeting card with the well-known statement to ‘Keep Calm And Carry On’, shows that the message is in want of repair. The last letter is hanging on by a screw, and one screw has come adrift. Is it enough to keep on going? See what a friend with a sense of humour makes of it. Click the image to go to the card in the catalogue.
As an alternative to keeping on going, we have Falling Sky, a greeting card with a message from a wise cockerel that contrary to the fears of the terrified populace, the sky is not falling.
And we also have Flaunt It – a greeting card for those who are confident that they have it and can strut their stuff without tripping over their feather boa on the way out..
Sweat Card
For the person keen on fitness, the ‘Sweat’ card shows a shiny metal bar with droplets of water on it. It is set against a granite background with text ‘Sweat’ repeated twice.
The metal is tough and the granite is tough. With every aspect of the image, the message says – not going back and no surrender. When the going gets tough, the tough keep going.
It is both an inspiration and a show of appreciation.
It’s saying that the recipient is someone who does it and sticks with it. It is someone who works, who keeps going, and who reaches a different place in his or her mind.
As we say, that person gets into the zone. But, and this is a bit but – when they are not in the zone, they don’t give up – they just keep going until rivers of sweat run like streams to the sea.
Here is the link to the card and the droplets of water.
Rise And Fall Card
The silvery blue seated Buddha sees the rise and fall of things. This inspirational greeting card features a seated buddha and a quote from the Buddha,
‘It is better to live one day seeing the rise and fall of things, than to live a hundred years without ever seeing the rise and fall of things.’
Says the Buddha: It is better to live one day seeing things clearly and as they are than to live a hundred years without ever seeing beyond the surface appearance of things. To see clearly is to be in a different place. And it is better to see that if only for a short time, than to never see that.
Do you remember that scene in the film The Matrix where one of the characters betrays his friends because the steak tasted so good? He knows the steak is an illusion and that he is forsaking reality, but the steak tastes so good.
What is to stop any one of us from tasting that steak? Only the ethic that guides us in such times.
Click the image of the buddha to be directed to the product page for this card.
Cuddle Card
Cuddle Greeting Card with a guinea pig and a banner with text ‘Cuddle A Guinea Pig’ and ‘Make The World A Better Place’
Gentle and heartfelt – that what we intend with the message to ‘Cuddle A Guinea Pig’ and ‘Make The World A Better Place’.
What more can one ask?
So to sum up, and answer the question of how to be inspired. The answer is to inspire others. Through living that we are a light to others.
We do what we can. We are not expected to be perfect, but we are expected to try anyway because it’s all we have and because we all have our contribution to make.