How Do You Find A Destiny – When Readiness Meets A Need, Actualization Follows: FDR And John Paul The Second

(Excerpt from the third Emerald Key: The Roots Nourish and Grow the Fruit)

FDR struggled immensely with polio away from the public eye. Unbeknown to him and to the American people, he was being made ready as he fought to get through his personal despair and depression. Roosevelt’s resolved determination and will power, which was fashioned during his painful ordeal with polio, is what America needed in the White House to overcome its own crippling despair and depression in the early 30s and the beginning of the Second World War. When readiness meets a need, actualization follows. The readiness and the need are invisible to each other until the meeting point brings them into fulfillment and actualization.

The late Pope John Paul the Second was fascinated in his early teen years with acting. He became enthralled with the power of words and especially with how he could deliver them through the characters such that they would powerfully impact his audience. Together with a small group of his friends he maintained underground theater work even under Nazi occupation of Poland. It is said that there he developed that rare skill sometimes seen with great actors to deliver his words with extraordinary persuasion and power. With his on-stage passion, it became common knowledge with his circle of friends that he would likely enjoy a great acting career. To their surprise he enrolled in the seminary. Little did he know he was becoming ready and had fashioned an inner program to take on a much greater acting role and meet his destiny through serving the Vatican as the first Media pope.

As John Paul walked to the balcony to announce his papacy to the world, it is said that his new role literally descended on him and he found his act. The programmed readiness in his case was the amalgamation of his devotional service to the Catholic Church and his on-stage practice. The readiness met its greater need and the outcome was a perfect union through the act of fulfillment and actualization.

What readiness have you been cultivating? What greater need are you facing in which your fuller realization may be found? The answer may lie ahead or right in front of you. Manifesting greatness now is less likely to play out in the same Churchillian or FDR archetype. We have entered the time of the small great heroes who perform their service and at times miracles when no one sees. You may be the next to carry that torch. What greater need are you called to?

© Aviv Shahar