There is a motivational plaque that hangs on the wall in my room. It hangs perched above my deskin the middle of the wall, just above a few scattered photographs so that the eye is immediately drawn to it, forcing a little bit of wonder as I think about its impact. There are no pictures on it, no sentences, no quotes, just one word consisting of just two letters.

Be....

It can be taken as it is, as an insignificant verb that really has no meaning when we think about it individually. One that is happily overlooked and kindly misused. However, it kind of sneaks up on us, hiding at the ends of sentences and before grandiose words to the point where we easily forget that those two letters may be the most powerful call to action that we are all silently searching for a way to enact. There are hundreds of thousands of ways to make that one word become the most influential two letters when put together.

Be curious...

I put it up on my wall and started filling in the remainder of the sentence with post-it notes. Again, each post-it note consisted of just one single word, one that was thought-provoking enough to add to my Be but never to finish it. It started out as the words "fearless" and "strong" until I challenged my friends to do the same. I watched as one of them spent a half hour contemplating words to pair with Be while he should have been writing a paper, but I think it was the highlight of my week (maybe his, too). You know that look of wonder that comes over the face of a person who isn't just daydreaming but really dreaming? That look-off-into the distance, eyes glazed over, but perfectly smug smile look? That was my friend as he would take a few moments to come up with another word, things he wants to be, and seconds later he would spring up from his seat to strategically place the next word on my wall next to his other goals and dreams for me (and hopefully for him, too).

Be open....

By challenging our own selves to finish the sentence but to never really complete it, we challenge others to do the same, to speculate about how they want it to end or how they want it to continue. That should be the goal, though, to never truly finish the sentence because there should never be a moment where we stop striving for another way to add to its splendor.

Be ambitious...

We set ourselves in a narrowed direction, striving to find the one thing that we should be and then limiting ourselves to capture the essence of it. But that's the problem. We should want to follow the end of that complicatedly ambiguous verb with so much more than just one word. We are so much more. It should be our challenge to stop narrowing the search for who we are working to be but to allow it to expand as far as our ambition allows. We span an infinite amount of possibilities, so let the curiosity of all that you can Be not scare you but inspire you. Let there never be a period at the end of a sentence that begins with the word Be.

Be more...