that which we call life

we have a most amazing ability: we look upon the world around us and we can see things that aren't there ... yet. we can imagine absent things so clearly that we are able to manifest them in the world outside our minds. we apply effort to dreams and turn them into something the rest of existence can experience.

the idea of the "creative process" is usually married with the idea of "art", but all of life, well lived, is that process of creation. to see the loaf of bread that does not exist yet, but will once we mix the wet and dry ingredients just right ... to see the dance in the leaves that fall from autumn trees set to music that persists only in our mind ... to make something with our hands, our words, our eyes ... this is that which we call life.

i know that there are those who choose (hopefully unknowingly) to skip over this trail of opportunity, and that there are also those whose world is who torn that this human experience is out of reach ... but for the vast, overwhelming majority of us: it's there as often as we wish it to be. what more do we want to make life meaningful?

i saw and heard something tonight that made me remember just how breathtaking the results can be when people with talent put immense effort into something. it made me remember all the small day-to-day things that are also, if on a more humble and maybe even mundane scale, what makes life "human".

this wonderful combination of dreams we hold in our awake mind and the energy we have that pours out from our bodies is all the gift we ever need to give to ourselves, each other, our (in the broadest sense of "our") children.

we're coming to the, admittedly artificial "end" of the calendar year and i (along with others in the northern hemi) are witnessing the raw embrace of the lull season (winter). soon days will start getting longer again (none to soon, as far as i'm concerned), we'll start using a new number for the year part of dates and that is when my thoughts turn most clearly to the near and distant future of the life-is-art process.

i wonder what things i will stumble upon in the next year, and which things will stumble upon me. i hope that every one of you reading this will experience a moment of contentment in your accomplishment, an "a-ha!" moment of new achievement and the comfort of seeing the recognition of your brilliance, no matter how humbly wrought or magnificently staged, in the eyes of another. i hope you can be those eyes for someone else, as well.

so when it has come time for me to write my "new years resolutions" they, at least this year, are easy to come by: be the eyes of genuine appreciation for someone else; be unafraid to apply great effort to at least one imagining that outpaces my previous ideas; to cherish that which we call life.

i know that i'm a couple weeks early with this sort of topic, but we don't always get to choose when an idea hits us; and when it does, it's time to run with it. =)