What is it that causes people living on islands and in remote places to be drawn to decorating their own bodies? Why are tribal people painting their faces and their chests with different colors? What specific purpose does that practice serve?
a search in art about art for art…
photo taken: a local artist detail while engrossed in his painting on a beach in Boracay.
In our lives we get so comfortable with the familiar, we anchor ourselves in the past and we walk around with the certainty of the now. The future, we file in our minds as unknown, not yet tread, uncertain, and we handle it with the tools of our past based on what we already know and have done. But what if the rules of the game have changed? What if the future is dealing us a new card? What if the path is about to change direction? How then do we get ourselves fit to interpret the future? Where do find the tools to update ourselves and be ready for what is clearly changing all what we know from governments, weather patterns, mental possibilities, arts, technology… everything that we see resulting from that which we don’t see?
Woke up to so many more questions today…
photo taken: an old man walking on a Kashgar city street~ Xinjiang
It’s a funny thing our perception of size. When we are young we perceive our parents to be bigger than life, our homes and gardens to be a large domain where we build our memories and our planet to be out of this world huge. Then we grow up, and we go back to visit our old homes, schools, gardens and we scream, “who shrank my world?”! Our perceptions have changed!
And knowing this, I made up a technique that I called ‘zoom out’ while growing up that each time I had to face a problem, an issue that felt so big it almost crushed me. I would mentally ‘zoom out’ and pretend to view myself in my home, in my village or city, in my country, on my planet, in my solar system, in my galaxy, spinning at enormous speeds, and suddenly, as if by magic, my problem would shrink down to insignificance and it would no longer be threatening to me in ‘perspective’.
I came back from my travels to find Lea with two major and pretty major “ouchies” on her leg. We have had to cancel swimming, sports, long baths, sand playground time and other weekly activities. These are the things that may leave a mark and be part of the stories we tell as we grow up pointing to our little scars. Don’t you have scars that always draw out a story of a childhood adventure from you to tell again and again? These are the visible “ouchies” resulting from play that I pray will be the only kind that scar children’s childhoods. It is the mental, emotional and invisible scars that scare me so much more.
At times in my parenting of Lea I feel like an internal reflection day is needed, a ‘her and me’ time that can bring harmony, rhythm and a much needed routine into lives together. Today felt like the right day to rewrite our daily plans, look back at our week, plan ahead and see what we have missed. Children can run so wild and chaotic but as soon as you invite them to a process like this, they love to play a part. It was like a magical calm descended on us this afternoon. We took all the time we needed without any pressure to gather ourselves, to stop and then hit the reset button of our daily routine. Of course we left some time for the goofy and the silly 🙂
