The Experiment: Day 18 ~ Potent Possibilities Abundant…

One of the most thrilling sights to me are poppy pods, the dried seedpods of the poppy. They look and feel like old, dried twigs, the pods themselves feel light and hollow, but those seedpods are filled with hundreds of poppy seeds. One seedpod could plant a whole garden of poppies. Contained in the most humble of nature’s true miracles are what I have always called “potent possibilities abundant.” There is no end to the magic that can be created from these poppy seeds. They are a glory beyond compare, and so, too, are there potent possibilities abundant in life. And many of them have “seeds” in front of us every day but they are so humble, often non-descript, everyday ordinary things we look right past them, often feeling lost, and forlorn, sometimes even hopeless when the tools are there to begin again.

What if you started by keeping a pad of paper and a pen or pencil by you all day. When you feel stuck, or forlorn, what if you just sat there and doodled. I don’t mean something whose intention is to become a work of art, no, I mean just doodling, shapes, stick figures, random patterns. The moment you start to move the pen across the paper something happens in your brain, you are creating, it can lead all kinds of places.

Or what if you kept a pile of old magazines and had a “cut and paste day.” I’ve written about this before. I keep magazines, glue sticks, scissors, an x-acto knife, nearby, and days when I am just lost I can rip the magazine apart, page by page (very satisfying, the act of destruction followed by an act of creation) and then cut out images, words, or phrases that mean something to you, spark something in you, make you smile. My friend Katya does amazingly beautiful collages in her journals. I do them in mine sometimes, but you know what you can do? You can go to the Dollar store and buy a package of kids construction paper, the kind that is cheap and comes in all kind of colors. You can just take one sheet in a color that sings to you and make a collage on that. You can make lots of collages like that and hang them up around the house.

Some days all you want to do is rip the pages out, one by one, cut out things you might want to use one day, and put the pieces in envelopes. A large legal sized envelope for bigger pictures or whole pages, smaller letter sized envelopes for words. You can collect these things so when you feel like collaging you’ve got pieces ready. And making a collage can help you work things out for yourself in your mind, or just create a colorful, creative picture that lights you up. What if one day you just sat for an hour tearing apart a magazine and cutting out a pile of words and images that caught your attention. Synapses are lighting up in your brain. Now glue them all down in any random fashion and look at it. Out of thousands of possibilities in one magazine you chose these things. What does that mean? You can write a story and include everything you have glued down in some way in your story. It can be funny, fun, or deep and thoughtful. The brain is full of potent possibilities abundant and the more we use these areas of our brain the more we awaken creativity inside of us, the more we bring creativity alive in our lives. I am going to do this myself. As I said the other day, in the “I don’t know what I think till I see what I say” frame of mind, the images that interest you enough to have you cut them out and paste them down are saying something to you. Look at a whole page of these things that you’ve glued down. I’m telling you, there is magic there.

Can you take a look around your house today? Go room by room, peek in closets and drawers, be a detective, have a scavenger hunt, and find all kinds of little things that interest you. In the process those synapses will be firing in your brain again. You can make a list, room by room, of things that you find so you won’t forget they are there, or you can take some things you find and put them all on a table. Why these things, why now? They are speaking to you for a reason. What can you do with them? I’d really like to know if you do this? Leave me notes in the comments about what you find and what you decide to do. THAT would light ME up! I love for you to share with me. I want us to become a community, taking time to leave comments, reading the comments of others, being inspired by other people living their lives and doing things that help them can be life-changing for us.

That’s it for me today. Today I go to my appointment to have my meds checked, but this evening I am going to cut apart at least one magazine, I am going to fill a page with words and images, and I am going to see what makes my synapses light up. There’s a story there. Tell me your stories. And doodle! Let’s get our brains glowing, lit up, engaged. Draw me a picture. Doesn’t that feel good?

Love to one and all. You matter to me, you really do, thank you for being here with me on this journey…

The Experiment ~A 365 Day Search For Truth, Beauty &
Happiness: Day 1 ~ Introduction To The Project
“Do or do not. There is no try.”
Yoda