Allow Yourself to be Inspired
We are continuously being made over. Not just once, like the Fab Five do on Queer Eye, but on a cellular level, almost forever. For instance, your intestinal cells are only 3-5 days old, while your lung cells have been here 2-3 weeks. Your heart cells are almost legal drinking age, at 20 years, but your bones are still in elementary school, just ten years old.
Regardless of the age you feel, you are still, mostly, pretty young. No one knows how much longer they have to live, so that excuse won't make it through this no-fly-zone.
You are young, so why not let life continue to inspire you?
I recently took a "Wander" with a group of life lovers like myself. (Learn more at https://www.wander-wild.life/). We were guided in the loosest sense, to wander off trail and love the land: to find ourselves by being "lost" to our ordinary ways of being. I had quite a moment with the delicate, still-kinda-curled-back tip of a fern frond. I helped it wrap its tiny baby branches around my pinky finger, then let it show me how it wanted to be touched: even more tenderly. It reminded me that I, too, want to be heard and respected and touched in a very specific way. I am inspired to learn how to express this.
Last weekend I visited the Chihuli Garden and Glass Museum at Seattle Center (https://www.chihulygardenandglass.com/). This artist miraculously combines color, form, texture, movement, and reverence for life. Most locals never visit this magical masterpiece of color and wonder, perhaps because it seems like a tourist attraction. If you visit, you will be inspired, I promise.
This man had so many wondrous ways of expressing his adoration for the hues, the gestures, the life, of the plants in his family gardens. The zillions of hours of devotion to his practice are palpable. I am moved by the placement and “choreography” of the displays, some integrated with living plants, all coordinated for maximum awe.
As I walk, ride and drive around town, my world fills me with so many beautiful ideas.
The gardens around my city, residential and urban, are bountiful expressions of horticultural expression. Some folks also offer comical, passionate, and macabre art as part of their yard displays.
I love the public library’s tribute to local poets: they post metal, outdoor versions of students’ work.
Here’s one I read today:
I also find great inspiration in Rob Brezney’s weekly newsletter. This week he focused on ways we can help this beloved planet of ours: by loving it. He’s quirky and sometimes ridiculous, but his sincerity bleeds through and I hear his passionate heart. That moves me!
Here’s his quote from Lakota elder Tiokasin Ghosthorse:
Our original instructions are to listen
to the cloud floating by and the wind blowing by
That’s poetry and prose in English
but is Wakahan in the Lakota language.
It means to consciously apply mystery to everything.
Everything is alive and has its own consciousness.
Please put down your phone, or step away from the screen. Go outside! Listen, smell, feel, look for the aliveness in everything. I hope you can find ways to enjoy your world, to let life continue to feed you with its beauty and never-ending forms of expression.
I close with one more image from Chihuli:
Those myriad glass pieces are displayed on clear glass, overhead. Here, you can see the light shining through them, onto the wall.
Enjoy!