Freshcapades a.k.a. Experience Seeking in Life

2011-11-14T14:09:00.000-07:00

Some people look for opportunities…but me, I look for experiences. From as long as I can remember, I was an experience seeker. What do I mean by this? Well, to me experiencing something is when we have all our senses engaged and we integrate those senses into our being, our life. When I was 4, I ran away to school. Yes, you read that right. I ran away to school. Not many children are very keen on going to school—leaving the protective arms of their parents—and delving into the foreign world of Elmer’s Glue, recess and learning to write your A, B, C’s. But, let me explain. I met my friends on our neighborhood playground every morning as they waited for the big, yellow schoolbus to pull up and whisk them away to this magical, and unknown place (at least for me) called school.

I thought to myself, “What is this ‘school’ they speak of and go away to every day? Leaving me behind and alone.” I just couldn’t stand it any longer and decided that this is something I had to experience. The bus ride. The school. The act of going somewhere other than where it was I stood. On that playground. Minus my friends.

So, I decided to load up a random totebag (likely one of my mother’s castoffs) with my bookshelf books of various shapes and size, and get on that schoolbus along with my playground friends. This would be the beginning of my “Freshcapades,” as I like to call them.

It’s fairly safe to say that some people are just born with spirited souls—who constantly reach out for the next exciting thing. I’m one of these people. I’ve spent a good portion of my life seeking experiences. Whether it’s to find out what this “school” thing is that everyone is going to—or just to get in my car and drive to wherever I decide to go—it is the experience of feeling it, smelling it, looking at it, touching it, hearing it, tasting it, doing it—that is just so tantalizing and rich. To engage the senses with unbridled passion and just delve in is tantamount. A sublime act of being. Not really knowing what to expect (free of expectations), is an offering of your soul to the Universe and God—when you make the foray into the unknown. It’s having that curiosity of a child we tend to lose when we get older, but we need so much in these times we are living in.

When I “ran away” to school, I had no idea what to expect. I had no idea where I was even going—other than “to school.” And, that was fine with me. The point of it was that I was going/doing something that I had curiosity about, and wanted to experience. The process. In this Westernized culture we are so fixated upon the end result. That we lose the ability to really be present during something we are experiencing. We don’t check in with ourselves on the “process” of cooking that meal or ordering that coffee at the local coffee shop. We just want the food, now. We want the coffee, now.

Most recently I’ve become keenly aware to the pace of life, I now live. I realized that it had been repeatedly asking me to s-l-o-w down. Even though everything around me was moving extremely fast—I was to take the counter-intuitive response, and shift down. You know what the expert drivers tell you if you are sliding on snow or ice in your car? That you are actually supposed to turn in to the slipping and sliding. A counter-intuitive move. This is a very mindful and scary thing to do.

Just as slowing down/shifting down is—in this harried, hurried world. My response was to always shift up and move with the current. And, I believe that many human beings responses were to do this as well. So what do you do when life asks you to slow down—when you feel inclined to keep up with the pace or feed into the rat-race?

Do you listen to that still, small voice? Will you listen to it? What will you do if you listen to it?

2010-03-12T15:28:00.015-07:00

Can't cure the blues? Here's somethin' you can do! (I'm a video link...click on me :)

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up. ~Pablo Picasso

Do you remember the first time you opened up a box of Crayola crayons? And you took a whiff of their waxy goodness...as you simultaneously reached for that first color. What color did you choose?

I chose cornflower blue out of my box of 64 crayons.

How about the flesh colored crayon that some of us used to color in the skin tone of the people we drew? Do you remember the name color of that crayon?

I don't.

What did you think about when you colored? Foreign policy--or maybe the things you had to get done on your "to do" list for the day.

I doubt it. I didn't either.

All I knew, was that I wanted to draw the best possible picture I could. And I was focused on accomplishing just that. I surrendered to that very moment. I was right there and nowhere else. I wanted to perfect the creative process I was engaged in, and it took all of my heart and soul. And nobody was going to distract me or get in my way.

So...

this very moment, ask yourself: If I were handed an assignment to draw out something creative and then color it in with some Crayolas, what would it be?

This assignment doesn't have boundaries and the teacher is whomever you want to choose. Oh, and nobody is going to interrupt you, stop you, tell you that you can't do this or get in your way.

Creative Thoughts & Fresh Talk

Freshcapades a.k.a. Experience Seeking in Life