Meet The Shine
- Agent McSueño
- Jun 9, 2016
- 2 min read
I have a young friend, wise beyond her years, who is an incredible dancer. Watching her performances, your jaw gets tired because you have to keep lifting it so you can drop it again. While the rest of us were slowly giving our youth away to build careers, she was dedicating so much of her vibrant youth to this passion, often with little more to show for it than the moment it is happening. But, when she's dancing, she looks more alive than anyone else you've ever seen, and by that, I might as well mean, she's more creative than anyone else you've ever seen. If you've seen her dance, you know how incredibly worthwhile it is, and how incredibly lucky the rest of us are to see it and be inspired by it. I asked her a few years ago what the source of her creative drive is, and I'll never forget her answer.
"It's what you're willing to give."
If you attended Tuesday night's The Shine, you already know what deserves to be said. If you weren't, here's the scoop:
The Shine curates an evening designed to raise your consciousness and bring you into direct contact with inspiring folks. To me, what's so cool about it is that they're accomplishing something that's really hard to do. They're bringing together a robust audience of amazing and unique individuals into an intimate setting, where everyone feels encouraged to interact with each other. Not only that, they serve a healthy dinner and conduct meditation so we're all interacting with good, beautiful expressions of ourselves (and without alcohol for that matter--especially for that matter.) Normally, it takes a lot of courage to do that, but The Shine gives us a ton of inspiring artists to watch, so there are plenty of things worth talking about.
Tuesday night, the Shine team lead by Light Watkins and Andrea Praet hosted another awesome event in NYC -- featuring the Mayhem Poets, featured speaker Amber Rae, musician Ryan Foss, and meditation guided by Elena Brower. There probably isn't a way to do much justice describing how inspiring and engaging each of these artists and volunteers were, except to individually thank them for what they were willing to give.
Thank you.
It was a real honor that this turned out to be the same night for sharing the Guerrilla Book Club with The Shine. It has been a terrific and challenging journey getting this idea off the ground, and Tuesday felt like a milestone celebration.
A huge thank you to everyone who helped make it happen, to The Shine who instigated and supported it, and to everyone who attended Tuesday night and gave such an overwhelming response. Here's the video that introduced the movement to you. Please share it with the folks you know to introduce the movement to them.
My hope is that, from here on, we'll get lots of good stories in from people who have unexpectedly received books that showed up in their life at the right moment. Keep an eye on this blog and sign up for the mailing list for occasional updates for those stories as they emerge. Happy Guerrilla-giving!
