Joy Is One’s Fuel

by Marnie Pehrson Kuhnsin Atlas Shrugged, Creative Process, Entrepreneurship, Light Bearers, Workaholismon Posted on

I’ve been reading Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged: (Centennial Edition) and am enjoying it very much. I can relate in many ways with the heroine of the story, Dagney Taggart. Dagney’s a workaholic. At the end of a particular long day, she steps outside, exhausted and looking for something to refuel her.

Her work was all she had or wanted. But there were times, like tonight, when she felt that sudden, peculiar emptiness, which was not emptiness, but silence, not despair, but immobility, as if nothing within her were destroyed, but everything stood still. Then she felt the wish to find a moment’s joy outside, the wish to be held as a passive spectator by some work or sight of greatness. Not to make it, she thought, but to respond; not to create, but to admire. I need it to let me go on, she thought, because joy is one’s fuel.

She had always been — she closed her eyes with a faint smile of amusement and pain — the motive power of her own happiness. For once, she wanted to feel herself carried by the power of someone else’s achievement. As men on a dark prairie liked to see the lighted windows of a train going past, her achievement, the sight of power and purpose that gave them reassurance in the midst of empty miles and night — so she wanted to feel it for a moment, a brief greeting, a single glimpse, just to wave her arm and say: Someone is going somewhere…”

I love that passage because I can relate to Dagney. I find immense joy and happiness in my work, but there’s something magical in watching someone else succeed, observing another’s creations, knowing there is majesty elsewhere on the planet. I think that’s why I love promoting people so much and why nature is the air I breathe.

About Marnie Pehrson Kuhns

Marnie Pehrson Kuhns is a Certified SimplyAlign Practitioner™ who uses music and creativity to mentor you past barriers, fears and doubts to discover, create, align with, and deliver your soul’s song (the mission, message or purpose you are on this earth to live). Marnie is a best-selling author with 31 fiction and nonfiction titles. If you'd like Marnie and her husband Dave to work with you personally on Your Great Reinvention, get a FREE 20-minute strategy session with Marnie here.