Birthing in 2019

So I’m at the elementary school where my kids attend for an event recently and I find myself – early for once - lingering in the hallway. In-between my date’s (read: 3 yr old daughter’s) demands, I discovered a message whose content demanded my attention more… It was in black construction paper letters on one of the teacher’s doors for all who enter it every day to see: 

"This year we will do what has not been before."

Right there. I felt something.

Here’s what I felt.

I felt that what I knew to be true was being posted in elementary school speak:

Life is the business of creating. 

Who knows this better than teachers? Who year after year conduct a series of similar lessons with similar assignments and expectations and ways of doing business and yet whose years look wildly different (asks their spouses) – no two alike.

The quote itself unearthed in me a sense of wonder at the time – a wonder about my very day…  what would I be privy to experiencing over the next 15 minutes? The next 5? The next 1? The mystery it provoked was a teensy bit intoxicating, and I promise the only bevy options at this school event were hot tea and coffee. 

I don’t know if this makes any sense, but my mind went to one of those play doh pusher-outer things, that you schmoosh playdoh into and then it spews out the other side… and then from there I went more grotesque: pork coming out of a meat grinder.

Why don’t I just go ahead and say the human manifestation of my playdoh and pork imagery:

A slimy lil thing being brought into this world from its momma.

Something being born.

What if we looked at ever aspect of life in this way? That each moment is a moment being actively born into existence that has never been before? 

What was brought to mind was last Saturday when my fam was invited to our cousins’ home for a holiday gathering. In addition to the ornament exchange and prime rib scrumptiousness, there was another pinnacle of focus for those gathered: The Broncos game. (In fact, Scott had a much more dialed-in experience than the rest of us: he departed the family festivities to mozie on down to the stadium containing the action itself.) 

What we found ourselves talking about, overlooking the game on the TV while sipping our beer/wine, was that in a world when almost everything can be damn well near predicted (weather, stocks, baby genders), never will there be a way to take away the unpredictability of the live-ness of sporting competitions. Nobody… NOBODY… can know how a football game will go, what will have us holding our breaths, what will have us with our heads in our hands, what will have us maniacally jumping on couches like madmen and women. Which players will perform above their perceived talent threshold. Which will flop. Which team will win, how they will win. 

There is no satisfying substitute for watching the art of something we anticipate unfolding.

That’s sort of WHAT LIFE IS EVERY SINGLE SLIVER OF IT… art unfolding. Moments being birthed one after the other. A painting evolving into existence, brushstroke by brushstroke.

If this is true. Could we maybe gift the birth of each unfolding second with more anticipation?  

I’m reading a book right now called, “The Artist’s Way.” It’s been around for fifteen plus year and sorta famous in many circles, I’m learning, for helping folks “unblock” their creative potential; many have found their callings through the author, Jullia Cameron’s, tutelage.  

She’s damn deep, and I love her. She opened me up to a whole new premise: 

Our creator encourages creativity.

Just as our Source authored us, we get to join in similar authorship; with each moment, we are actively creating.

She says this: “If you think of the universe as a vast electrical sea in which you are immersed and from which you are formed, opening to your creativity changes you from something bobbing in that sea to a more fully functioning, more conscious, more cooperative part of that ecosystem.

This ups the ante: Cameron is saying that not only are we – regardless of consciously knowing we are or not – leaving a creation in our wake just by being alive, there’s something wacky-cool that happens when we intentionally unearth our individual creative gifts and channel them into the universe's synchronicity. 

In other words, there's living (creating) and then there's living (creating).

I don’t know about you, but if I had to say where I’d like to be on our electrical sea, I’d prefer to exist as a creature who contributes to its good than as a piece of purposeless pollutant floating on its surface. 

So, even though that elementary school teacher probably put those letters up in August, to set the stage for her students walking in for a new school season, I am choosing to make the message the focus for the many millions of moments of my 2019:

"This year we will do what has not been before."

This year I will do what has not been before.

Life is the business of creating.

Heck, I'm not gonna wait until the ball drops, even. I'm paying increased attention and anticipation to this unfolding masterpiece of mine....

starting...

NOW. 

And I'm already intoxicated, without the New Years champagne.

Happy New Year, friends.