I was folding up my load of laundry and switching a comforter into the dryer when I thought of this post. Fluidity, fluidity, fluidity..
In yoga, “sthira and sukha” are the essentials that remind us that if we start feeling friction, heat, challenge, find joy – ease – breathe. If we start feeling really loose, really comfortable, look for challenge – take a leg up – add something into the fold.
One of the most interesting parts of my self-discovery over the past 9-ish months (about this time last year, I was entering into official discernment about retiring from corporate life), is that I am in fact quite flighty. I do a million things at a time. I… just do.
I have shared here on the blog before how the ideas for Apple… for Google… for Disney… for General Mills… for you name it come daily. And I know now that it is really not about picking a path in terms of career or product certification or getting the best job with the best benefits and the best flexibility and the healthiest, safest environment. Picking a path for an idea person means: how do I express my ideas daily.
YouTube
Frozen Spaghetti.
Instagram.
Being out in the world. Gathering stories. Telling the stories.
In my experience working on my books, and feeling the limitless source of creativity, I have gotten to know this thing that I get to know as an artist: that I can sit at my desk and wait.
If I don’t sit and wait, I can walk and wait.
If I don’t walk and wait, I can cook and wait.
If not that, I can sleep and wake. Sometimes clean and wait.
And – eventually – the idea will be like “hey! ready!” and then I go light the candle and show thanks for the gift then outpours some illustration or poem or two pieces that fit together and I smile like “I could have never thought of that but I thought of that!” or “I knew I would eventually think of that but never did I think it would have been that!”
“HOW COOL”
I often mutter “HOW COOL” at our studio desk in our home with all the screens and the markers and the whiteboards.
Sometimes I chuckle… sometimes I cry… sometimes I excitedly call my husband or my mom. “Look how cool this is!” *And I share w/ them*
In this understanding of the limitless source of creativity… this pure awareness of innovation – we get to create things, new things, needed things, fun things – with our consciousness; I not only realize the very mortal understanding that you only get so many days in this life but that we are all capable of some degree of this. We each have our color… our flavor.
Your purpose right now may be in the office making money, keeping insurance, till you can break out and kayak all day.
Your purpose right now may be raising a toddler and figuring out your life hacks for laundry and meal prep.
Your purpose right now could be garden zooms or politics or whatever. BUT – the oneness of mankind, that John Lennon push to live as one – comes down to: are you being who you are in doing so?
Is the way you are kind there? Is there a gentility about your spirit that allows others to learn from you and for you to learn from others?
I once told an early boss of mine that I was not supposed to get things finished; but that I was supposed to get things started.
And, in my corporate retirement, I see this as so true. I refuse to live by the idea that I just can’t seem to settle on one idea or that I lack focus. Instead, I embrace the idea that my focus is on sharing as many trickles of life as I can and, when I just can’t share: enjoy it.
Sharing puppy raising tips to a woman waiting for her kid at school with her 3 month old husky littermates out the window is as satisfying to me as a top three mistakes I won’t make this school year Instagram story to my fellow parents of teenagers which is as satisfying as telling a story around a dinner table to a handful of old mates. I have always wanted to be English on this blog…
So, this morning, I decided to blog first. To keep the creation off of the old boiling pot of a mind going; to put my mind soup in a bowl and put it out there. It is literally how and why I am wired.
I am getting closer, every day, to living out the realization I am a thought leader and contributor. Maybe to one person in a phone call that gets their wheels turning on their own life or maybe, some day via a video on YouTube about local transportation needs that will get Elon or the mayor of Webster Groves’ attention and heal some poverty wounds. Who knows. The least I can do is put it out there.
Because, no matter what, I know MY purpose is to share. That fluidity. That weaving. So that the owners and the people whose purpose is to capitalize and make happen, to see through and deliver can take from the fountain of my conduit what they need / want / etc and go from there.
Being an idea person can be a challenge. But – in the spirit of the oneness of mankind, the effort (sthira) then calls for the ease… and where I find joy, where I have always found joy, is in the sharing. And my earliest desire to be an apple tree because of the continual cycle of creation and giving comes to be.
My sukha.
My ease.
Frozen Spaghetti 