Needing Some Inspiration

Sreejit’s directions for this week’s Dungeon Prompt is:

When you’re feeling down or just need a push forward with your day, where do you look for inspiration? What drives you, or keeps you smiling? Or when you’re really down, what keeps you alive, and getting out of bed each morning? You don’t have to write about a major presence or source of inspiration in your life, but can just tell us about one of the little things that elevate you in some way.

I could create a long list of things that inspire me and can’t imagine pairing it down to one. Therefore, I will compromise and settle for sharing two of them with you! 

In August of 2016, a friend introduced me to the music of a child singer named Sooryagayathri. I was astounded by the purity of her voice and shared some of her videos on my blog. Since then, that post has been viewed 3180 times, making it my most viewed post. When I need to calm down, slow down, or be inspired, I have started listening to a playlist of her music. The video below is one of the first songs I heard Sooryangayathri sing.

I read about Jadav Payeng for the first time in 2014. Jadav started planting trees on a barren sandbar in India when he was 17 years old. Now the forest he created is larger than New York’s Central Park and is “home to several thousand varieties of trees as well as an amazing diversity of wildlife, including rhino, elephants, and even tigers.” This documentary about him was created by Will McMaster.

Jadav’s work is a good example of the difference one person can make. When I feel overwhelmed by the scope of the reforestation work I’m doing in Seattle’s Greenbelt I think of him and remember that change happens one step at a time.