Our gifts
This exercise was suggested to me and I'm offering it up.
Make a running list of all the ways life delights you, helps and energizes you, everyday miracles you take for granted, the uncanny powers you possess, the small joys that occur so routinely you forget how much they mean to you, the steady flow of benefits bestowed on you by people you know and don't know. What works for you? What makes you feel at home in the world?
I'll start by remembering a morning where I sat in a restaurant with friend and while they were talking about something I wasn't involved in I started playing with my drinking straw. It was a flex straw, you know, the kind that bends so you can drink easily. That morning this little invention seemed a miracle to me, a marvel of the inventiveness of the human mind. Where did the idea come from, who created it, and wondering what the impetus was that caused someone to go to the trouble to invent. I never gave much thought to that last part but I've never looked at another straw the same way. That was a miracle to me, and that may well be the first day I started to understand exactly what miracles are. The inventions of a creative intelligence. Now in case you are wondering, I did find the story, and it may please you to know, that that particular miracle came about because a man saw a child struggling to drink a soda with the long straight straw. So he worked to make something easier for her. A child inspired a man. That alone is a miracle. In this day and age, often adults dismiss children. So part two of this miracle is that someone took the time to notice and do something to ease someone else's experience.
What other miracles are there that we take for granted, that are in our lives every day that were the invention of a mind that didn't see limitation but possibility? I for one have seen many, and one more in particular stands to mind. The machine that shells sunflower seeds. How on earth, and why? A means to a process, and necessity surely is the mother of invention. A mother we should not ignore but embrace ever harder because these days, in these times, inventing new ways to be in the world, new directions to take, new minds to create, and new thoughts to enter our consciousness, yes, a mother is surely what we need.
Make a running list of all the ways life delights you, helps and energizes you, everyday miracles you take for granted, the uncanny powers you possess, the small joys that occur so routinely you forget how much they mean to you, the steady flow of benefits bestowed on you by people you know and don't know. What works for you? What makes you feel at home in the world?
I'll start by remembering a morning where I sat in a restaurant with friend and while they were talking about something I wasn't involved in I started playing with my drinking straw. It was a flex straw, you know, the kind that bends so you can drink easily. That morning this little invention seemed a miracle to me, a marvel of the inventiveness of the human mind. Where did the idea come from, who created it, and wondering what the impetus was that caused someone to go to the trouble to invent. I never gave much thought to that last part but I've never looked at another straw the same way. That was a miracle to me, and that may well be the first day I started to understand exactly what miracles are. The inventions of a creative intelligence. Now in case you are wondering, I did find the story, and it may please you to know, that that particular miracle came about because a man saw a child struggling to drink a soda with the long straight straw. So he worked to make something easier for her. A child inspired a man. That alone is a miracle. In this day and age, often adults dismiss children. So part two of this miracle is that someone took the time to notice and do something to ease someone else's experience.
What other miracles are there that we take for granted, that are in our lives every day that were the invention of a mind that didn't see limitation but possibility? I for one have seen many, and one more in particular stands to mind. The machine that shells sunflower seeds. How on earth, and why? A means to a process, and necessity surely is the mother of invention. A mother we should not ignore but embrace ever harder because these days, in these times, inventing new ways to be in the world, new directions to take, new minds to create, and new thoughts to enter our consciousness, yes, a mother is surely what we need.
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